Mike Little’s Journalized

The father of the modern computer is being honoured, 50 years after he died in tragic circumstances.

From the BBC news story ‘Father of the computer’ honoured…

He killed himself on 7 June 1954, by eating an apple he laced with cyanide. On Monday, a blue plaque will be erected outside his home in Cheshire.

There has been very little to honour this great man. The largest symbol to date being a life-size bronze statue of him in Sackville Park in Manchester, where he sits on a bench, apple in hand. I pass that statue every day walking or cycling to and from my office. I always glance over as I pass. Some lunchtimes I take my lunch and sit near him.

Further reading: The Alan Turing Home Page a fabulous site full of information on Turing by his biographer Andrew Hodges

Cool and Geeky!
Return of Colossus to mark D-Day

Colossus Mk2, a wartime code-breaker hailed as one of the first electronic computers, has been rebuilt and reunited with Bletchley Park veterans.

Colossus was also ground-breaking because it was put into action two years ahead of its nearest US rival, the Eniac (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer).

Although, Mr Sale said, Eniac was thought to have been first because Colossus was kept a secret until the 1970s.