Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

CHAPTER 20: COLOSSUS

1. Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma, London: Burnett Books, in association with Hutchinson, 1983, Vintage paperback, 1992, pages 160ff.

2. I. J. Good, ‘Pioneering work on computers at Bletchley,’ in N. Metropolis, J. Howlett and Giancarlo Rota (editors), A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, New York and London: Academic Press, 1980, page 33 for others who arrived at Bletchley at much the same time.

3. Hodges, Op. cit., page 160.

4. Paul Strathern, Turing and the Computer, London: Arrow, 1997, page 59.

5. Good, Op. cit., pages 35 and 36 for excellent photographs of Enigma. For the latest account of the way the Enigma codes were broken, and the vital contribution of Harry Hinsley, using recently declassified documents, see: Hugh Sebag-Monte-fiore, Enigma: The Battle for the Code, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000.

6. Hodges, Op. cit., page 86.

7. Strathern, Op. cit., pages 46–47.

8. Hodges, Op. cit., pages 96–101 for the link between rational and computable numbers. See also: Strathern, Op. cit., page 48.

9. Strathern, Op. cit., pages 49–50.

10. S. M. Ulam, ‘Von Neumann: The Interreaction of Mathematics and Computers,’ in Metropolis et al. (editors), Op. cit., pages 95ff.

11. Strathern, Op. cit., pages 51–52.

12. Ibid., pages 55–56.

13. Ibid., pages 57–59.

14. Turing also knew who to take advice from. See: Wladyslaw Kozoczuh, Enigma, London: Arms & Armour Press, 1984, page 96 on the role of the Poles.

15. At times the messages were not in real German. This was an early problem solved. See: R. V Jones, Most Secret War, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978, page 63.

16. Good, Op. cit., pages 40–41.

17. Hodges, Op. cit., page 277.

18. B. Randall, ‘The Colossus’, in Metropolis et al. (editors), Op. cit., pages 47ft for the many others who collaborated on Colossus. See Hodges, Op. cit., between pages 268 and 269 for photographs.

19. Strathern, Op. cit., page 63–64.

20. See Randall, Op. cit., pages 77–80 for an assessment of Turing and the ‘fog’ that still hangs over his wartime meeting with Von Neumann.

21. Hodges, Op. cit., page 247.

22. Strathern, Op. cit., page 66.

23. See John Haugeland, Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1985, pages 261–263 for an exact chronology.

24. Hodges, Op cit., pages 311–312.

25. Guy Hartcup, The Challenge of War: Scientific and Engineering Contributions to World War Two, Exeter: David & Charles, 1970, pages 17ff.

26. Ibid., page 94.

27. Ibid., pages 96–97.

28. Ibid., page 91. For German progress, and some shortcomings of radar, see: Alfred Price, Instruments of Darkness, London: William Kimber, 1967, circa pages 40–45; and David Pritchard, The Radar War, London: Patrick Stephens, 1989, especially pages 8off.

29. Hartcup, Op. cit., page 91, but for a detailed chronology, see: Jack Gough, Watching the Skies: A History of Ground Radar for the Air Defence of the United Kingdom by the RAF from 1946 to 1975, London: HMSO, 1993, pages 8–12.

30. Hartcup, Op. cit., pages 90 and 107.

31. Ronald W. Clark, The Life of Ernst Chain: Penicillin and Beyond, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1985, pages 47ff. Weatherall, In Search of a Cure, Op. cit., pages 174–175.

32. Gwyn Macfarlane, Alexander Fleming: The Man and the Myth, London: Chatto & Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1984, pages 119ff.

33. Weatherall, Op. cit., page 168.

34. Ibid., pages 165–166.

35. Gwyn Macfarlane, Howard Florey: The Making of a Great Scientist, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, page 331.

36. Weatherall, Op. cit., pages 175–176.

37. John E. Pfeiffer, The Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion, New York: Harper & Row, 1982, pages 26ff, who says there was no dog. Annette Laming, Lascaux, London: Penguin, 1959, pages 54ff.

38. Mario Ruspoli, The Cave of Lascaux: The Final Photographic Record, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987, page 188. See also note 37 above.

39. Ibid.

40. Pfeiffer, Op. cit., page 30.

41. Ruspoli, Op. cit., page 188.

42. Pfeiffer, Op. cit., page 31.

43. For a detailed description, see Ruspoli, Op. cit., and Fernand Windeis, Montignac-sur-Vézere, Centre d’Études et de documentations préhistoriques, Dordogne, 1948.

44. Paul G. Bahn and Jean Vertut, Images of the Ice Age, London: Windward, 1988, pages 20–23.

45. Evan Hadingham, Secrets of the Ice Age: The World of the Cave Artists, London: Heinemann, 1979. page 187.

46. See Ruspoli, Op. cit., pages 87–88 for a discussion, though no women are represented at Lascaux. Professor Randall White, of New York University, believes that certain features of the Venus figurines (tails, animal ears) suggest that these objects date from a time when early humans had not yet linked sexual intercourse with birth. The animal features suggest that animal spirits were thought to be involved. (Personal communication.)

47. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Appearance of Man, London: Collins, 1965, page 51.

48. Ian Tattersall, The Fossil Trail, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, paperback 1996, pages 62 and 67.

49. Chardin, Op. cit., pages 91 and 145. Tattersall, Op. cit., page 62.

50. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, Op. cit., pages 566–569 which also includes Bernhard Rensch and G. Ledyard Stebbins in this group though they didn’t publish their works until 1947 and 1950 respectively, by which time the Princeton conference (see below) had taken place. Mayr says (page 70) that there was no ‘paradigm shift’ in a Kuhnian sense (see chapter 27 of this book) but ‘an exchange’ of ‘viable components.’ Julian Huxley’s book was published by George Allen & Unwin in London; all the others in the synthesis were published in New York by Columbia University Press. See also: Ernst Mayr and William B. Provine (editors), The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980, 1988, which explores the development in evolutionary thinking outside Britain and the United States: France, Germany, Soviet Russia, together with modern reassessments of the early figures in the field: T. H. Morgan, R. A. Fisher, G. G. Simpson, J. B. S. Haldane and William Bateson.

51. For the popularity of ‘saltation’ see David Kahn (editor), The Darwinian Heritage, Princeton: Princeton University Press in association with Nova Pacifica, 1985, pages 762–763.

52. Tattersall, Op. cit., pages 89–94.

53. Ibid., page 95.

54. Walter Moore, Schrödinger: Life and Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, page 395.

55. Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life?, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1944, page 77.

56. Moore, Op. cit., page 396.

57. Schrödinger, Op. cit., page 61.

58. Ibid., page 79.

59. Ibid., page 30.

60. Moore, Op. cit., page 397.