From Hodges and other sources, I would say that AT was open about being gay. Texts from his co-workers (usually women) are quite clear many people knew he was gay… there’s a wonderful line in the movie Breaking the Code in which AT’s boss, Dilly Knox, asks Turing to tone down his relations with a particular young man at Blecthley. Knox himself was gay: "Alan, such things [gay relations] are best kept as a dimly-remembered memory.” One is struck, as with a hammer, at the emotional pain and resignation of being gay during this time… winked at among close friends, but career-ending at a higher level.
Dag -- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 Tel: +1 650 810 1035 Fax: +1 650 810 1055 On Jun 5, 2014, at 11:47 AM, members-request@sigcis.org<mailto:members-request@sigcis.org> wrote: Send Members mailing list submissions to members@sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to members-request@sigcis.org You can reach the person managing the list at members-owner@sigcis.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Members digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Alan Turing as gay icon (Ceruzzi, Paul) 2. Re: Alan Turing as gay icon (geoghegb@cms.hu-berlin.de) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2014 15:20:39 +0000 From: "Ceruzzi, Paul" <CeruzziP@si.edu> To: "'Paul N. Edwards'" <pne@umich.edu>, sigcis <members@sigcis.org> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Alan Turing as gay icon Message-ID: <447612405A15694BAA260AEC80EB05392C13616B@SI-MSEDAG01.US.SINET.SI.EDU> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" My question was: if Turing lived to the modern era, what would he have thought about decrypting Angela Merkel's phone conversations? What do we think of modern-day disciples of Turing who do this? The late Thomas Hughes spoke of "technological momentum": that an organization learns to do things a certain way, and they continue to do that. GCHQ had this tradition of intercepting German telecommunications that endured through many changes of government, boundaries, hot and cold wars, peace, etc. It even goes back to the Zimmermann telegram of 1917. http://hnn.us/article/155699 I know that this is not on the topic of Turing's sexual orientation, but to me this is an equally-significant topic that we ought to be examining. Paul Ceruzzi From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Paul N. Edwards Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2014 10:01 AM To: sigcis Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Alan Turing as gay icon I expect "openly gay," with all the implications that phrase carries today, is an anachronistic label -- not an accurate description of Turing's public persona, nor truly of his private one either. Paul On Jun 5, 2014, at 0:36 , Thomas Haigh <thaigh@computer.org<mailto:thaigh@computer.org>> wrote: My initial guess was that this was an anachronism. Hodge's book Alan Turing: The Enigma appeared in hardcover late 1983, and one might expect it to have taken a while to spread far into popular awareness or to have its rather complex narrative reduced to "won World War II." The Turing play "Breaking the Code" was not written until 1986. That did a huge amount to boost Turing's public profile, at least in the UK. However, the Amazon "search inside the book" finds a line of this kind in a recent reissue of The Normal Heart script and a 2000 volume combining it with the sequel. It is of course possible that the play was revised from its original 1985 version, which is not searchable online. So apparently Kramer was a pioneer in taking the complex portrait of Turing given in the Hodges biography, which I believe was widely reviewed on its initial release, and turning it into the slogan that "it was an openly gay Englishman who was as responsible as any man for winning he Second World War." Kramer continues, "His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do--and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay." That would be an important passage in a history of Turing in popular memory, which would be a great dissertation topic for someone. Tom -----Original Message----- From: members-bounces@sigcis.org<mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org> [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Janet Abbate Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2014 4:42 PM To: sigcis Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Alan Turing as gay icon Did anyone catch the shout-out to Alan Turing in the HBO AIDS-themed movie "The Normal Heart"? The main character rants, "A gay man won World War II! They should teach that in schools." I wonder if that was actually the image of Turing in 1985 (when the original play was written) or something they added later for the movie? (I mean that he won WWII, not that he was gay.) Dr. Janet Abbate Associate Professor, Science & Technology in Society Co-director, National Capital Region STS program Virginia Tech www.sts.vt.edu/ncr<http://www.sts.vt.edu/ncr> www.linkedin.com/groups/STS-Virginia-Tech-4565055<http://www.linkedin.com/groups/STS-Virginia-Tech-4565055> www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS<http://www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS> _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members ___________________________ Paul N. Edwards Professor of Information<http://www.si.umich.edu/> and History<http://www.lsa.umich.edu/history/>, University of Michigan A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming<http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/vastmachine/index.html> (MIT Press, 2010) Terse replies are deliberate<http://five.sentenc.es/> (and better than nothing) University of Michigan School of Information<http://www.si.umich.edu/> 3439 North Quad 105 S. State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285 (734) 764-2617 (office) (206) 337-1523 (fax) pne.people.si.umich.edu<http://pne.people.si.umich.edu>