Prof

by Dermot Turing

  Sir Charles Darwin, Director of the NPL, who thought Alan’s paper on Intelligent Machinery unfit for publication.

  Off scratch

  In truth, the thing that had been roaming the countryside was none other than Alan Turing himself, and he had been doing it for some time now. He had developed a taste for long-distance running during his days at Bletchley Park. He would on occasion run across from the NPL to Dollis Hill (about 14 miles), and one day in Teddington the hobby became more of an organised machine.

  We heard him rather than saw him. He made a terrible grunting noise when he was running, but before we could say anything to him, he was past us like a shot out of a gun. A couple of nights later, we kept up with him long enough for me to ask him who he ran for. When he said nobody, we invited him to join Walton. He did and immediately became our best runner.

  It was the period leading up to the 1948 Wembley Olympics. Austerity Britain was not expecting to do astoundingly well, but track athletics was one sport in which Britain might not be dishonoured; unlike thinking machines, running was something which everyone could understand. Later, the Walton Athletic Club admitted Christopher Chataway, an old Shirburnian of a new generation, into its membership. Chataway was (like Alan) best as a three-miler and won the world record in 1955; he also acted as Sir Roger Bannister’s pacer in the famous four-minute mile of 1954. As a member of the Club, Alan was swept into a busy programme of race meetings. In 1946 Alan won the three-mile Club Track Championship and the ten-mile Road Running Championship, both in record time. Another race took place on Boxing Day 1946, just before he went off to the Harvard conference, and had enough drama to reach the papers:

  3 MILES RACE WON BY ONE FOOT

  FAST TIMES AT WALTON

  By A Special Correspondent

  Excellent weather and a track in first-class condition considerably helped athletes to record fast times in the open handicap meeting at Stompondlane sports ground, Walton, yesterday.

  The Three Miles was a thrilling race in which C. G. Scott (Surrey A.C.), who started from the 10-yards mark, beat the scratch man, A. M. Turing (Walton A.C.), by one foot in the last stride in 15min 51sec.

  Athletic prowess also gave Alan something to write to Mother about.

  Cunard White Star R.M.S. ‘Queen Elizabeth’

  My dear Mother,

  The sports meeting was a great success, the weather being perfect.

  Amateur Athletic Association programme for July 1946. Alan ran in the Six Miles but wasn’t in the first three.

  I also enjoyed my race (3 miles) thoroughly. I was running off scratch which made me feel rather grand. I managed to take the lead from one Scott in the last lap, and was able to do quite a sprint in the last 220 yards, but Scott put up a better one and beat me by a few feet. A very exciting race indeed.

  Yours

  Alan

  My dear Mother,

  Yes, I was running in the Southern Counties Championship at Ascot, but did very badly. Also ran in the Nationals yesterday, and was in much better form, coming in 62nd out of about 300 runners. This probably represents my form fairly well.

  It was, however, rather bad form to turn up at Guildford in running kit.

  Alan’s behaviour as it affected other people was not, in my view, so amusing for those who were at the receiving end. Alan would descend upon any household at any moment of the day or night with or without warning and seldom with more than a few hours notice. When he was stationed at Teddington after the war he discovered that the distance to Guildford corresponded roughly with the marathon distance, so the first we knew of his impending arrival was a badly made parcel containing a change of clothing. About twelve noon he would come running up the steep hill of Jenner Road and straight up the stairs and into a bath.

  Nevertheless, provided Alan took his bath at John’s house in Guildford, rather than Mother’s, all would be well, and Mother was content to read the good things in the paper.

  MARATHON AND DECATHLON CHAMPIONSHIPS

  The Amateur Athletic Association championships for this year [1947] were concluded at Loughborough College Stadium, on Saturday, with the second and last day of the Decathlon and the decision of the Marathon championship.

  Alan Turing boarding a bus with other members of the Walton Athletic Club, 1946.

  Pipped at the post. Alan Turing lost the Three Miles by one foot on Boxing Day, 1946.

  MARATHON CHAMPIONSHIP (26 miles 385 yds.) (record: 2 hrs. 30 min. 57.6 sec by H. W. Payne, Windsor to Stamford Bridge, on July 5, 1929; standard time: 3 hrs. 5 min.). – J.T. Holden (Tipton Harriers). 2 hrs. 33 min. 20 1-5 sec., 1; […] Dr. A. M. Turing (Walton A.C.), 2 hrs. 46 min. 3 sec., 5.

  Fifth place ought to have been good enough for the Olympic squad, but it was not to be, owing to a leg injury which troubled Alan for several months in 1948. Alan kept running for the Club at Walton even after he had left the NPL, running in the London–Brighton relays in the same team as Chris Chataway in 1949 and 1950, and continuing as vice-president of the Club until 1954.

  Many years later, another member of the Club recalled:

  Looking back, he was the typical absent-minded professor. He looked different to the rest of the lads; he was rather untidily dressed, good quality clothes mind, but no creases in them; he used a tie to hold his trousers up; if he wore a necktie, it was never knotted properly; and he had hair that just stuck up at the back. He was very popular with the boys, but he wasn’t one of them. He was a strange character, a very reserved sort, but he mixed in with everyone quite well; he was even a member of our committee. We had no idea what he did, and what a great man he was. We didn’t realise it until all the Enigma business came out. We didn’t even know where he worked until he asked us if Walton would have a match with the NPL. It was the first time I’d been in the grounds. Another time, we went on our first ever foreign trip to Nijmegen in Holland; he couldn’t come, but he gave me five pounds, which was a lot of money in those days, and said ‘Buy the boys a drink for me’.

  Alan was also mixing in with the boys back at Cambridge, where there was a new group of young mathematicians. First, there was Neville Johnson, a student from Sunderland, who may have felt out of place in the grandeur of King’s; tea in Alan’s rooms blossomed into something more, and Neville retained a place in Alan’s affections for the rest of his life. More colourful than Neville was Norman Routledge, who was clever, flamboyant and sometimes outrageous. Thus, writing to Alan in 1952:

  My dear Alan,

  What a delicious Xmas card you sent me – it was certainly the finest choirboy I’ve ever had – (although someone else sent me a delicious youth in pyjamas peeping from behind some curtains with a charming inscription about ‘Here’s wishing you everything you want …’).

  Am being trained as an ACE operator at N.P.L. – find whole work v. fascinating.

  In 1952 Norman was working at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, where they planned to install a computer. Later he would go on to be an inspirational teacher at Eton; meanwhile at King’s it was banter and achieving B-star wrangler status and then a Ph.D. Norman was able to become an ACE operator in 1952, because by then a modified version of Huskey’s test assembly had become operational. In early 1948 there was still no computer at the NPL, and still no prospect of one – in fact, the ACE as designed by Alan did not become operational until late 1958. It was all very frustrating. Worse, M.H.A. Newman’s laboratory in Manchester had had a small computer actually working since August 1947.

  Mr Newman and Dr von Neumann

  At one stage, historians of computer development believed that Alan Turing had conferred during his 1942–43 visit to the United States with his old boss John von Neumann: it would make for a nice story if John von Neumann’s seminal paper on the EDVAC had been worked up jointly with Alan. Certainly, von Neumann had been influenced by the concepts in Alan’s paper on Computable Numbers. Stanley P. Frankel, a colleague of von Neumann who had learned how to program ENIAC, said that ‘in about 1943 or �
��44 von Neumann was well aware of the fundamental importance of Turing’s paper of 1936 “On Computable Numbers …” which describes in principle the “Universal Computer” of which every modern computer is a realization. Von Neumann introduced me to that paper and at his urging I studied it with care.’

  However, Alan couldn’t have discussed computing machinery with John von Neumann during his 1942–43 visit to America, because while Alan was in the US, John von Neumann was in the UK, and having at least one meeting with a different ex-colleague from Princeton. John von Neumann was in the UK to understand better what makes explosions escalate; it was certainly on his agenda to discuss the state of the art as regards computing machinery. He wrote to his boss Professor Veblen at the IAS in Princeton that he had ‘developed an obscene interest in computational techniques’, and later he told his UK host that ‘I received in that period a decisive impulse which determined my interest in computing machines’. The Princetonian whom von Neumann had met with was none other than M.H.A. Newman, the senior man on the team that was just about to start work on Colossus. Although they didn’t meet at Bletchley, and Newman was too discreet to discuss his war work, it is difficult to imagine that von Neumann did not have a discussion about a more neutral topic, one of burning relevance to von Neumann, namely computing machinery.

  In 1945, as the war came to an end, Newman was appointed Fielden Professor of Mathematics at Manchester University. Notwithstanding von Neumann’s plans for the EDVAC, and notwithstanding the NPL, M.H.A. Newman was planning a computer laboratory of his own, one with a broader vision than just being a number-crunching bureau.

  The University, Manchester 13

  8 February 1946

  Dear von Neumann,

  I have been owing you a letter for a long time, since you sent me a copy of your Theory of Games. I can truthfully say that if your book had been less interesting I would have answered sooner. […] My more particular reason for writing at this moment is computing machines. I have just heard, through Hartree, that you are starting up a machine project in Princeton. I am also hoping to embark on a computing machine section here, having got very interested in electronic devices of this kind during the last two or three years. By about eighteen months ago I had decided to try my hand at starting up a machine unit when I got out. It was indeed one of my reasons for coming to Manchester that the set-up here is favourable in several ways. This was before I knew anything of the American work, or of the scheme for a unit at the National Physical Laboratory. Later I heard of the various American machines, existing and projected, from Hartree and Flowers.

  Once the N.P.L. project was started it became questionable whether a further unit was wanted. My view was that, in this, as in other branches of technology, basic research is wanted, which can go on without worrying about getting into production; that with the development of fast machine techniques mathematical analysis itself may take a new slant, apart from the developments that may be stimulated in symbolic logic and other topics not usually in the repertoire of engineers or computing experts; and that mathematical problems of an entirely different kin from those so far tackled by machines might be tried, e.g. testing (say), the 4-colour problem or various theorems on lattices, groups, etc, for the first few values of n. […] I hope you don’t think the field will be getting a bit crowded if still more come in.

  Anyhow, I have put in an application to the Royal Society for a grant of enough to make a start. I am of course in close touch with Turing. […]

  In 1946 a new war had broken out, one for talented and experienced people, particularly electronics engineers. In his letter to von Neumann, Newman said that ‘good circuit men’ were ‘both rare and not procurable when found’.

  Professor Newman’s Proposals for an Electronic Calculating Machine – 616/2/2.

  I have read Professor Hartree’s note and feel inclined to agree with him that a group at Manchester parallel with the group working on the pure mathematical aspect of the use of machines of this kind would be a very good thing. […] So long as we have Dr. Turing I feel that his talent once the machine is constructed, should be employed in the direction of further development of the use of the machine in the most general manner possible […] So far as I remember Professor Newman’s proposals contained a suggestion of a full time electrical engineer at £800 a year. Although I do not know details I imagine Professor Newman has a particular individual in mind, namely, Mr. Flowers at the Post Office Engineering Research Station. Surely Mr. Flowers’ first duty is to us […].

  JOHN WOMERSLEY

  The NPL had done well to nab Dr Turing.

  What Newman had nabbed, instead of Turing or Flowers, was the Colossus itself. The week before VJ Day, on 8 August 1945, Newman asked his superiors at Bletchley Park if he could take with him ‘the material of two complete Colossi; and in addition a few thousand miscellaneous resistances and condensers off other machines’. When it was ready for delivery, the equipment sent to Manchester weighed seven tons. These seven tons would give him a 500-yard start in the three-mile race to build an electronic computer.

  In early 1946, as projected in his letter to von Neumann, the Royal Society received an application for a grant of £36,000 for Newman to build a computing machine. A committee, including among its members Professor Hartree and Sir Charles Darwin, was appointed to consider the application, and by May the committee had concluded that the application could go forward to the Treasury with their support. Newman had got his funding.

  Split atoms and stolen assets

  He had done even better than get funding and a lorry-load of components. He had also got Professor F.C. Williams, who had solved the problem of computer memory in a sleeker and more elegant way than the mercury delay line. Williams was using cathode-ray tubes (CRTs) – rather like rudimentary old-style big-box television screens – and exploiting their property that the screen luminesces for a while before the image fades away. Digits could be stored in arrays on CRT screens, read, and refreshed. The data were almost-immediately accessible, and on a random basis, so the problem of waiting for a sound wave to trudge up a delay line would not arise. They were trying something similar for the IAS machine at Princeton, but the technology was difficult, which is why Goldstine had been debating delay lines with Alan in early 1947. But Williams was good: by mid-1947 he had made his CRT memory work. So, when Alan had an opportunity to discuss his frustrations with Newman in early 1948, the solution was obvious. ‘I stole him away, and made old Darwin very angry because I stole him away from NPL to come to Manchester.’ Alan resigned from NPL in May 1948 and went to work for Newman.

  Sir Charles Darwin was asked to explain to his Executive Committee why it was that Dr A.M. Turing had resigned from the NPL.

  Director said this was not quite as bad as it appeared as Dr. Turing’s work at the Laboratory had, in the main, already been done. Dr. Turing had been on leave of absence at Cambridge University, with a general understanding that he would return to the Laboratory for two years before taking up a post at a University. During his stay at Cambridge, Dr. Turing had been on half pay from the Laboratory to supplement his Fellowship, etc., fees, and he has now produced a report which, although not suitable for publication, demonstrated that during his stay there he had been engaged in rather fundamental studies.

  Alan’s move to Manchester was highly significant, and would be life-changing in many ways. Alan would live there for the rest of his life. It didn’t mean losing touch with his friends at Cambridge and elsewhere, but for the first time he had a senior university post, he bought a house, and it provided opportunities for both the professional and personal sides of his life. Newman’s philosophy about what computers were for was exactly in line with Alan’s own vision. So Alan became the Deputy Director of the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at the University of Manchester.

  The Laboratory was described by Professor F.C. Williams:

  A fine sounding phrase, but what was the reality? It was one room in a Vict
orian building whose architectural features are best described as ‘late lavatorial’. The walls were of brown glazed brick and the door was labelled ‘Magnetism Room’.

  The brown glazed brick dated from the era of Ernest Rutherford, who had used the building to do his original atom-splitting experiments; the brickwork is still somewhat radioactive. It was not only the surroundings that were rudimentary: so was the computer, often referred to as the ‘Manchester baby’. The baby’s memory consisted of three Williams tubes (as they were now called), each storing 32x32 bits of data. One tube was taken up with the accumulator and another by the control, leaving precisely 1024 bits for random-access memory. Like an austerity Christmas display, the baby’s dreary wires hung from the ceiling in loose gathers, while racks of valves glowed dimly and the CRT displays cast an eerie monochrome flicker among the twigs, scrap iron and other leftovers salvaged from the two old Colossi. Williams again:

  Our first machine had no input mechanism except for a technique for inserting single digits into the store at chosen places. It had no output mechanism, the answer was read directly from the cathode ray tube monitoring the store. At this point Turing made his, from my point of view, major contribution. He specified simple minimum input facilities that we must provide so that he could organise input to the machine from five-hole paper tape and output from the machine in similar form.