
Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note - SimplyUseless
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/2019/july/50-pound-banknote-character-announcement
======
esotericn
This is almost two months old and was posted at the time.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, but this is the first time it makes the front page. Better late than
never.

~~~
cornstalks
It was definitely on the front page last time (664 points, 298 comments):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20439425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20439425)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Thank you.

The top comment elegantly makes the point that:

 _It would have been better for Turing if the government left him alone
instead of chemically castrating him and driving him to suicide, then
venerating him._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20441603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20441603)

The fight for LGBTQ rights is far from over. As a reminder, LGBTQ individuals
are at greater-than-average risk of homelessness.

[https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/06/lgbtq-
indiv...](https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/06/lgbtq-individuals-
are-at-increased-risk.html)

------
johnchristopher
These announcements always make me ponder about the people we'll put on bank
notes or erect statues in honour of in 50 years and are alive and persecuted
today but not recognized by society.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Aubrey de Grey. The future will look back at today like we were savages for
not innovating faster to cure aging.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey)

~~~
Retric
Beware people telling you things you want to hear.

Aubrey de Grey is most likely going to be remembered like the guy saying
machine vision is a weekend project before any serious research took place.

~~~
toomuchtodo
66 years from Kitty Hawk to landing on the Moon. Progress must start
somewhere, and encouraging is more helpful than pessimism.

Even if I don’t live forever, maybe my kids will. That will meet my success
criteria.

~~~
paublyrne
Would you want that for them? The idea of immortal humans is extremely
unappealing to me.

~~~
toomuchtodo
May they live as long as they wish a happy and healthy life, and may they die
when they are ready and have made the choice themselves.

~~~
jacquesm
What will happen is that you will have a bunch of very rich centenarians who
will own just about everything simply for having a couple of decades head
start on the newcomers. The same thing is already happening today. Unless you
want to cap wealth and property this is not going to end well.

It's already at the point today where real estate and other relatively scarce
resources are much more available to and owned by the wealthy who then use
this to extract rent from the younger generations. Give those people another
80 years or so to do play the game and we will _all_ end up in hock to them.
You'll be born in debt to someone who was born a century or more before you.

~~~
whatshisface
If we're imagining a world with immortality why not imagine one with space
colonies, or some other form of growth? The new people could get the new
stuff, same as it's been since the end of feudalism.

------
Athas
It's good that Turing gets put on a banknote - and about time.

However, the concept art in that article is really ugly. I'm not that familiar
with British banknotes - are they usually that messy looking? Every piece of
text is in a different font, and it seems pretty vulgar to have a quote on the
note at all. There's even drop shadows! It honestly looks like something I'd
put together in Corel Draw in the mid-2000s.

~~~
iamnotacrook
I just got back from a trip to the States and I have to say that US money is
very boring by comparison to UK money. How on earth do blind/old people deal
with the fact that all denominations are practically the same size, design,
colour etc?

~~~
soneca
I recently moved to the US and I hate its coins. To the point that I consider
all of them unusable. When I get home, I leave all the coins that I received
as change on a plate by the door, hoping someday I will bring all of them at
once somewhere to change for bills (I believe there are machines that do
this).

My complaints:

i) They do not have _numbers_ on them!! You have to _read words_ to know the
value

ii) To make point i) worse, they have _nicknames_ printed on some of the
coins!! They do not write _" ten cents"_, it is _" one dime"_. They do not
write _" twenty-five cents"_, they write _" quarter dollar"_ (even the unit
here changes)

iii) To make points i) and ii) worse, there is no default place where the
value is written. $0.01 is a horizontal banner. $0.10 and $0.25 are round-
based by the edge of the coin. $0.05 is round-based, but not by the edge of
the coin, just slightly above another text that is by the edge.

iv) The coins do not obey a coherent progression of value and size. From
smallest to largest the coins are: $0.10 < $0.01 < $0.05 < $0.25

v) The colors are all the same, except for the $0.01 coin.

So when you have a bunch of coins, you have to properly spread them in your
hand to be able to compare their sizes (which is hard when the items are
circles), account that there is no size-value correlation, and if you do not
remember by size; you have to _read_ a tiny sentence, lost in the middle of
several other sentences, with no typographic differentiation of where they
are.

~~~
dghf
> ii) To make point i) worse, they have nicknames printed on some of the
> coins!! They do not write "ten cents", it is "one dime". They do not write
> "twenty-five cents", they write "quarter dollar" (even the unit here
> changes)

Those aren't nicknames. They are the official names of the coins as laid down
in the Coinage Act of 1792 (though "dime" was originally spelled "disme") and
its successors.

[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Statutes_at_Lar...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Statutes_at_Large/Volume_1/2nd_Congress/1st_Session/Chapter_16)

------
barrkel
Perhaps the continuing decline in the currency's value will give us an
opportunity to see £50 notes more frequently. I don't think I've seen one more
than twice in the past 12 years, and I get cash out less and less frequently.

~~~
Zenbit_UX
You might be living in a bubble, fifty quid is much less than $100 and I see
those notes all the time.

Getting currency exchanged before a trip? They give huge bills.

Buying a used phone or furniture from Craigslist? Are you going to pay with
100 twenties?

New ATMs even ask you the breakdown of bill sizes you are want.

~~~
isostatic
> You might be living in a bubble, fifty quid is much less than $100 and I see
> those notes all the time.

In nearly 40 years I can't think I've ever seen a £50 note, let alone spent
one. €50 notes, sure, but Europe is backwards - I saw a €200 note once when
buying a ferry ticket

> Getting currency exchanged before a trip? They give huge bills.

1990 called and wants its features back. I haven't been to an airport yet that
didn't have an ATM. With the exception of the U.S. I rarely spend cash when I
travel anyway.

> Buying a used phone or furniture from Craigslist? Are you going to pay with
> 100 twenties?

I can't imagine ever wanting to spend $2000 in cash. I had a builder do some
work and it was about £800, a simple bank transfer and job done.

> New ATMs even ask you the breakdown of bill sizes you are want.

Do they? I haven't used an ATM since May (and that was in Hong Kong). Now that
is unusual - most people do use cash, but then most people are more likely to
want £5 notes from an ATM than £50.

Now the UK isn't as cashless as say China, but Cash is certainly not the norm
- especially for anyone under the age of 60

~~~
ben_w
> I haven't been to an airport yet that didn't have an ATM.

Those have _terrible_ exchange rates. I’ve used an airport ATM once, and even
then that was only because I realised too late that Switzerland wasn’t in the
Eurozone.

~~~
isostatic
An ATM gives the exchange rate my bank gives, which is better than pretty much
any bureau d' change.

~~~
ben_w
The ones in British airports give terrible rates for Swiss Francs. My bank
also had a terrible rate at the time. I got a better bank-like-entity since
then.

~~~
isostatic
I'm sure they do, why would I use an ATM in the UK to get Swiss Francs? You
get Swiss Francs in Switzerland, so use one at arrivals in Zurich!

~~~
ben_w
On that occasion, I didn’t want to risk my (Halifax bank) card not working
when I arrived — that particular card has been somewhat unreliable in the USA,
and I still don’t know why, so I cannot be sure it won’t be denied elsewhere.

I have since gotten some better cards for international travels.

------
doe88
Would be a good idea on many levels to follow suit and have Turing on an €
bank note. His impact is universal.

~~~
armada651
The € bank notes do not have historical figures on them. Only the coins have
historical or royal figures on them depending on the country that minted them.

If the UK had the euro they could put his face on their coins, but well...
that's never going to happen anymore.

~~~
phpnode
> that's never going to happen anymore

Give it 15 years...

~~~
philwelch
Breenter?

------
yakshaving_jgt
I wish it were also Rejewski et al. on the bill, the Polish mathematicians who
originally cracked the Enigma about 8 years before they handed their work over
to Turing.

------
Causality1
Alan Turing deserves it, but do _they_ deserve _him_? Few people have done so
much for their country and afterwards been so thoroughly betrayed by it.

------
benkarst
He should be on the pound coin!

------
brailsafe
Love this, but damn they should get whoever is designing the Canadian bills to
fix this one up.

------
advertisehere
Don’t forget the mother of computer science.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace)

------
SimplyUseless
Alan Turing's achievements

* Designed the programming of world's first commercial computer (Ferranti Mark 1)

* Devised Turing Test, to test whether computer is capable of thinking like a huamn

* Got an OBE for his wartime services

* Inventor of Turing Machine. To this day, all stored-programme digital computers are modelled on this invention

* Built the machine that helped in the breaking of the Enigma code used by the German forces. This was used to decode 2 messages per minutes

* His work shortened the WW2 by atleast 2 years.

* Alan was a member of the team which decoded the 'Fish' cipher, which was used towards the end of the war by the German High Command to transmit messages between Hitler and senior officers in the field.

~~~
ETHisso2017
> His work shortened the WW2 by atleast 2 years.

And was then pushed to suicide by the intelligence agencies of the country he
saved hundreds of thousands of lives for.

~~~
pilsetnieks
No, it was just ordinary police and a court conviction that did that. The
intelligence agencies likely knew about his orientation long before and did
nothing about it - if anything, it was something that could be used to control
him.

------
chrisfinazzo
The US needs some updating as well - see the kerfuffle about trying to get
Harriet Tubman on the $20, which Trump nixed, because racism. He wanted to put
her on a reissued $2 bill, but I'm not sure there's an appetite for that.
Symbolism matters in this case, and Trump is clueless.

I still like this concept from a while back:

[https://kottke.org/10/08/us-dollar-redesign](https://kottke.org/10/08/us-
dollar-redesign)

Replacing GW with Obama might be a bit contentious, but the rest of it seems
solid.

~~~
winter_blue
> [https://kottke.org/10/08/us-dollar-redesign](https://kottke.org/10/08/us-
> dollar-redesign)

Wow, that redesign is really impressive! I hope something like it gets adopted
eventually.

~~~
dijit
That’s incredibly bold and ambitious. I kind of love it. It breaks a universal
tradition that I didn’t consider before.

~~~
winter_blue
Here's a link with pictures of all the redesigned notes:
[https://www.designboom.com/design/dowling-duncan-us-bank-
not...](https://www.designboom.com/design/dowling-duncan-us-bank-note-
designs/)

------
aussieguy1234
This man broke the enigma code, which helped win the war against the evil
Nazis. He built early prototypes of the modern computer.

Your computer might not be as powerful today, or even exist without his
inventions. Funny how alt right/nazi idiots are using later versions of his
technology to type out comments that seem to imply he's on the note simply
because he was persecuted.

But it's easy to see why Nazis hate him. He's not only gay, but he broke their
"unbreakable" code. Maybe they'd have gone further in their war if it weren't
for him?

