ANOTHER TIME

Not too many years ago, The Imitation Game was an Academy Award Best Picture nominee.  It is the story of Alan Turing, an Englishman, who got his PhD at Princeton in America.  As World War II was getting under way in Europe in 1939, he was called by his country to join a group of science, math and linguistics whizzes tasked with the job of solving and deciphering the German military message codes.  He did just that and in the process saved maybe millions of lives by shortening the war and, as a bonus, made great strides in developing the first computer - some call him the "father of the computer.." Not bad!

Now, for the other side of the story:  In 1942, the British came by German messages that they could no longer decode.  It seems Hitler's boys added another layer of probability to the code.  The machine they had developed was now too slow to be of much value.  This time they came to the USA for help.  The US Navy came to NCR, the National Cash Register Company in Dayton, Ohio.  There, chief research engineer Joe Desch had developed the first electronic calculator.  He put the whole engineering staff of NCR on the top secret project and came up with the answers.  They were able to double or triple the speed of the British machine.  Yeah Ohio!

Now, for the rest of the story:  Everything Turing did during the war was classified and kept secret for many years.  In the early 1950s when no one knew who he was, the British police arrested him for being gay - it was against their law at the time.  He was sentenced to either jail time or castration - he chose chemical castration.  In 1954, the man who fathered the computer and saved millions of lives killed himself.  Not until, 2013 did Britain decriminalize him.  It was another time.
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