[TUHS] In Memorium: Alan Turing

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 7 Jun 2018, at 03:59, George Michaelson <ggm at algebras.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Sid was a professor at Edinburgh, alongside Donald Michie who had
> worked with Turing. They (Sid and Donald) fought like cats and dogs
> over the AI story, there was no love lost there nor much mutual
> respect, so nothing came from that side, and Donald is dead too. I
> never really spoke to him about anything. By the time I had any sense
> of interesting questions to ask, It wasnt going to happen.

This is tangential perhaps, but, having been at Edinburgh in the (late) 1980s and 1990s -- I met Donald Michie a couple of times and I think my wife was taught by your father -- I wonder if anyone is properly  writing down (I mean, writing book(s) about) the history of electronic computing, and AI in particular, in the UK?  Although (almost?) all the first generation of people must be gone now, there must be many people who knew them well &/or were their students.  But in due course there won't be and all the first-hand information will be gone.  It probably wasn't really *possible* to write it down in a sensible way until the BP stuff became public because so much of the early part would have made no sense ('how did so many people know what to do?'), but there's a window when it is possible to make sense of it, which is probably still open now but will close.

If there are good books on this I'd be interested.

--tim
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