Alan Turing: The Enigma (81 page)

It was a curious sequence of events, in which the NPL administration had
done everything possible to avoid ‘building a brain’. They had chased after Williams, although it would mean a complete redesign to use the kind of storage he was developing. They contemplated handing the construction to Wilkes, when he had only ‘a mechanic and a boy’ and incompatible design principles. They paid for Huskey to come over from America because of his experience ‘on the apparatus side’, and then failed to use it. Finally they had appointed, as the head of an electronics section, a man without motivation or experience for the job in hand. The one person whom they had not trusted was Alan Turing. The one policy they had not adopted was that of finding or training engineers to effect the proposals to which they had agreed in 1946. It was certainly not easy to find such expertise, but ultimately, they had not really tried.
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After this happened, Alan withdrew. The programming work continued, and they went a long way with subroutines for floating-point arithmetic, including matrices and the numerical solution of differential equations. But Alan had lost interest in this work, although he spent time on what he called ‘abbreviated code instructions’. These took up the ideas announced in his original report, of having the computer expand its own programs. They made, in effect, a high level language for the computer, long before such things were developed elsewhere. But he was thinking more about the even higher level that he had announced in February, that of making a computer show intelligence. In this respect there was nothing to be gained by working at the NPL. Darwin and Womersley concurred in this opinion, and on 23 July Darwin wrote to the DSIR that since the ace had now reached the stage of ‘ironmongery’, it would be best if its designer were to ‘go off for a spell’. The separation of brain from hand could not have been made more explicit. It was agreed that Alan should spend a year at King’s to develop his theoretical ideas. It was too early in his Civil Service career for this to be a normal ‘sabbatical year’, but the DSIR and the Treasury were persuaded to treat him as a special case.

Monday 18 August 1947 was declared to be the official start to the building of the ACE. Darwin presided over a special morning meeting carefully calculated to impress upon the lowly engineers the privilege they enjoyed in working for Womersley’s project. There was much brave talk of taking on the Americans, and then Thomas ‘indicated the way in which he was about to approach the project in its initial stages’. Alan attended, but said nothing.

Womersley, reporting to Darwin that the ACE should be complete by early 1950, was satisfied. In theory the ACE was still a
venture of immense national importance, and Hiscocks had called this its ‘D-Day’. The truth, however, was that the NPL had now almost succeeded in cutting the ACE down to its own bureaucratic size. Only Alan Turing prevented the triumph being complete, awkwardly remaining to voice the original vision. On 30 August he wrote to Darwin that
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A letter has come from Ministry of Supply …asking us to do their programming for them. This is work that we ought to be able to undertake, but it will not be possible with our present very small programming staff. This staff is quite inadequate for our own needs; it will have to be at least three times greater than it has been up to now, if we are to make a success of the ace project. The arrival of Mr D.W. Davies …will, of course, be of some help, but we need in addition another two or three bright [Scientific Officers] …immediately.

It is essential to recruit the ace planning staff now, because it must be trained and in full production long before the machine itself is available for use. A large body of programming must be completed beforehand, if any serious work is to be done on the machine when it is made.

In 1941 a direct appeal had worked wonders, but by 1947 the war might as well have never been. And talk of ‘planning staff’ for the universal machine was almost as unreal as it would have been in 1936. As it happened, the new recruit, Donald Davies, who came from atomic research, had been studying the abstract universal machine of
Computable Numbers
, rather annoying Alan by finding mistakes of detail in its construction. Alan had also given a talk on the ACE at the NPL which Rupert Morcom attended. The unhappy fact was that after eleven years there was still nothing but paper plans, a paper machine and paper programs, abstruse and insubstantial as the ‘satisfactory numbers’ he had tried to explain at the Clock House in 1936. He had given his all, and had nothing to show for it but paper. He would give them another chance to create the right conditions. But the wheels of 1939, that once had seemed to be turning in his direction, were now revolving backwards.

In the summer of 1946 Alan had made contact again with James Atkins, who came to visit at Teddington. He had had a very different war, for standing fast as a conscientious objector he had spent four months in prison and then worked in the Friends Ambulance Unit. He asked Alan what he had done, and Alan replied ‘Can’t you guess?’ But James could only guess that it was to do with the atomic bomb. After the passage of nine years, they found that there was nothing that they could truly say or do. When James went, he left something behind, and returning after a few minutes caught Alan sitting in his bed-sitter with a particularly acute look of misery.

Alan had mentioned
The Cloven Pine
to James, and in early 1947 Fred Clayton himself got in touch again. Alan replied on 30 May

I was very glad to hear from you again, and should very much enjoy teaming up with you again for another sailing holiday.

The best dates for me would be either the beginning of September or the beginning of July. The last year or two I have taken to running rather a lot. This is a form of compensation for not having been good at games at school. The application at present is that I have a Marathon race on August 23 and do not want to upset my training by sailing in August or late July.

In the spring Alan
had tried himself out against much stronger competition than that of the local suburban clubs. In the Southern Counties ten-mile championship of 22 February he had done ‘very badly’, but two weeks later at the National ten-mile event had come in sixty-second place out of three hundred runners. The Marathon race to which he referred brought out his endurance training to better advantage, and in fact he would come in fifth place.
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With a time of 2 hours, 46 minutes, 3 seconds he was only thirteen minutes behind the winner. Behind the off-hand words about ‘running rather a lot’, he had taken it very seriously. His letter to Fred continued with an equally off-hand reference to the war:

I heard rumours at B.P. from time to time that you were coming there, and was disappointed that nothing came of it. You didn’t really miss anything.

Alan went to Bosham at the end of June and fixed up a September holiday.

Meanwhile on 3 August Alan’s father died at the age of seventy-three. He had been in poor health for several years. He left £400 more to Alan than to his brother, in compensation for the sum spent on John’s articled clerkship twenty years before. But Alan handed it over to his brother, not thinking this fair.
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He also received his grandfather John Robert Turing’s gold watch. As it happened, Mr Turing died just twelve days before the passing of the British Raj ended that exile world to which he belonged. After his death Mrs Turing spoke little of him, and kept few reminders of his existence. Her own life was far from declining, and a new independence was reflected in the adoption of her second name Sara in preference to Ethel. She had also taken more interest in Alan’s doings, pleased that he was busy on something useful at last. She had sensed the high hopes of 1945, and sympathised with his complaints on how he had been thwarted.

When Mountbatten relinquished British rule to the new Dominions of India and Pakistan, it was a belated victory of the new men. Another case of where the war had obliged the reforms long urged in the 1930s, it also represented the renovation of an independent British role in world affairs. But these were still uncomfortable days, in which the new world order was rapidly becoming apparent. The American loan, negotiated by Keynes
before his death in 1946, and supposed to repair the British economy, had largely evaporated thanks to American insistence on making sterling convertible again. After a financial crisis, Dr Dalton withdrew convertibility on 20 August, pepping up the sagging team spirit on the radio: ‘God bless you all and your families. Get all you can of happiness and health and strength out of the sea air and then go all out in a great effort to help your country.’

As usual the servants were being called upon to make up for the crimes and follies of the masters. Alan had probably had enough of this by now. But he and Fred Clayton took the advice regarding sea and fresh air, and had a holiday which recaptured something of the days of August 1939. Alan tended to be rather impatient with his friend’s handling of the boat, trying to explain feedback to him, and swearing mildly. But one day Fred took the helm over to the Isle of Wight, helped by a favourable wind, and all went well except that on the way back they bumped into a buoy and Alan said, without thinking, ‘I really ought to be a bit more careful with buoys.’ Then they both saw the joke and laughed.

But it was no laughing matter. They exchanged their observations on the black market of unofficial truth, Fred contributing comments on the customs prevailing in India, where he had done low-level Japanese code-breaking, and Alan speaking of the war as a sexual desert (‘You didn’t miss anything’) except for the incident while in America. It then transpired that Alan had expected this holiday to hold something for him in that direction, which came as a shock to Fred, who explained that he was going to get married.

Picking up the German threads after the war, Fred had entered into a warm correspondence with the sister of the two boys on whom
The Cloven Pine
was mainly based. It was she whom Fred intended to marry. It was an odd coincidence that one day, out on the water, Alan caught sight of a passing boat and said Oh, that’s rather awkward, it’s Martin Clarke’s sister, we were engaged.’ Joan recognised Alan, and waved and smiled. (She had seen him a few months before at the LMS lecture.) But they did not meet. Alan told Fred of the broken engagement. Fred was left confused by his rejection of Alan whom, however, he did not find at all attractive. He and Alan talked about their respective decisions, ‘freedom and consistency of mind’ was not so easy for his friend, but Alan was now quite clear as to where he stood.

On 30 September 1947 Alan resumed his King’s fellowship,
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after a break of just under eight years from 2 October 1939. Because of the 1944 renewal, it was set to run until 13 March 1952. He was thirty-five, but could have, for not
wearing a gown after dark. He had been taken for an undergraduate, and his youthfulness surely accentuated what was something of a return to the life of the past. In certain ways, of course, Cambridge had changed. Most students were in their mid-twenties, and had arrived after some years of service life rather than with the artificial immaturity of public schools. It was a more personally ambitious, less politically conscious Cambridge than that of the 1930s. But no one spoke of the war, which was fading like a dream, and it would take more than the war to change the special character of Kings.

One friend immediately stood out from the rest. Robin Gandy had taken Part III of the Mathematical Tripos that summer, and was now working in theoretical physics towards a fellowship. Soon after term began, Robin called on Alan and asked if he could borrow his copy of Eisenhart’s book on continuous groups. Alan took it off the shelf, and out fluttered a newspaper picture of a rank of pageboys at Princess Elizabeth’s wedding. There was someone else in the room, probably Robin’s physicist friend Keith Roberts, and Alan only said darkly ‘You’ll find nice
pages
like that in my books.’ But next morning, Alan said to him, ‘We know each other quite well now …I might as well tell you that I am a homosexual.’ Robin’s own personality was different, but he was someone who like Alan cared that (as Carpenter had put it)
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men shall learn to accept one another simply and without complaint …honour the free immeasurable gift of their own personality, delight in it and bask in it without false shames and affectations.

and he was pleased that Alan had chosen to tell him. It was very different from the sticky moment with Don Bayley. Robin was rather surprised that Alan was so forthright, for if obliged to give an opinion at Hanslope, he would have said that Alan did seem to be more drawn towards men, but that he was probably too shy and inhibited to do anything about it. The truth made Alan less austere and more fun. Alan in turn was very pleased that Robin should understand him so well, and with that out of the way, there was nothing (except Bletchley Park) that they could not talk about, whether of science or gossip.

He was altogether more confident with people than he had been before the war, and was elected to George Rylands’ play-reading Ten Club, which he would have found frighteningly precious and pretentious then. He was not elected to the Apostles. Robin was an Apostle, and would have proposed him, except that at that point they were choosing only rather younger candidates. He did, however, become rather better connected with the King’s social network, and Robin was particularly helpful in opening up his life to more communication, compensating for some of the fraught years of silent, frustrated desire. ‘When I recall some past
epoch,’
Alan said in reply to some question about the past from Norman Routledge, a new acquaintance of this year, ‘I think of whoever I was in
love
with at the time.’