I am full of admiration for Alan Turing, the people who worked with him and many others who broke codes at Bletchley to help us win the second world war.
Alan Turing was a victim of his time, sadly. He was a genius mathematician; he broke the code of the enigma with his magnificent, oh so complicated machine, The first computer.
Image courtesy of theindependent.co.uk
He invented the first computer, all of us have benefited from his work. And yet, at the time, when minds were closed, rules were Victorian, laws were positively stone age, a homosexual man had to hide his sexual preferences or be damned. He suffered because he was a Gay man. He was almost child like in his honesty, unable to hide or lie or be deceitful in order to shield himself from the wrath of the authorities. He didn't go to jail although he was charged and sentenced to two years for "Indecent Behaviour," He chose to opt for a two year hormone therapy that the judge offered to him as an alternative. The hormones affected his mind and body.
But those were the laws of the day, and I nor anyone else can change them. They make me angry and very sad, but there are many things of the past that make me ashamed of how we were and how we thought, and glad that I live in the 21st Century, though sometimes I wonder if life has changed that much. In many ways it has not. But in some ways, we are more enlightened, I think, I hope....
