Alan Turing committed suicide after chemical castration for homosexuality

New Delhi: Alan Turing, the father of computing, whose birth centenary is being celebrated on June 23 was also a victim of homophobia. The World War Two codebreaker committed suicide after being convicted and chemically castrated for being a homosexual.

Mathematician Turing led a team at Bletchley Park country House north of London which cracked the Nazis' Enigma code - regarded by the Germans as unbreakable - a move credited with helping to shorten the war and save countless lives.

However, five years after the war he was convicted of gross indecency under laws which banned homosexuality and was sentenced to chemical castration involving a series of injections of female hormones.

On the occasion of the 100th birth anniversary of Alan Turing, a pioneer in the field of computing, we take a look back at computers.

Image: 1929: Inside the tote room at Ascot race course showing the tote machines.
The first combined computer-calculator and wristwatch to be produced, known as 'Pulsar', on show at the International Watch and Jewellery Trades Fair at Wembley, London.
1955: Rev Ellison, technical consultant on the Univac project working on a control panel which gives direct access to Univac. This allows him to see exactly how the indexing is progressing and to check it with the bible he is holding.
1946: A utility model of the programmable electronic computer ENIAC (electronic numerical integrator and computer) at Welwyn Garden City.
1946: A utility model of the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). It was later revealed that the first had been the British wartime code-breaking machine, 'Colossus'.
Sixteen year old Christine Andrews is the first person to use an 'instant information machine' called a Directomat at Victoria station. The machine gives answers to the 120 most often asked questions at the enquiry office.
1959: Dr HA Thomas, manager of the Instrumentation and Control section of Unilever's engineering department gives the Faraday lecture at London's Festival Hall. His subject is 'Automation' and here he demonstrates the workings of an electronic calculator or computer.
1951: London Windmill Theatre girls Wanda Altar and Rae Berry play a game called 'Nim' on the Ferranti Nimrod Digital Computer on show at the Science Museum Festival of Britain Exhibition. The game demonstrates the basic principles of computing.
1958: A woman operating an 'electronic brain' used by a German mail order business to open letters, take details, check on stock availibility and price, invoice orders and inform departments concerned.
1936: The new robot post office sorting machine being used in the foreground, and the old manual method in the background.
1963: A computer being used at William Hill Ltd bookmakers.
1956: Sheilah Ablett at work with the E101 computer at the British Institute of Management in London.
1978: The Interbank desk of the Midland Bank International Division, where the exchange rate is called.
A man replaces a magnetic tape data storage drive in an early model office computer, mid 1970s.
A woman in a knit dress with flared sleeves works at an early model desktop computer made by Servus, 1970s.

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Alan Turing: Chemically castrated for homosexuality

Alan Turing, the father of computing, whose birth centenary is being celebrated was also a victim of homophobia.

The conviction meant Alan Turing, a pioneer of modern computing, losing his security clearance and being unable to continue his work. In 1954 he killed himself at the age of 41.

The legislation used against the maths genius was the same as that used to prosecute and jail playwright Oscar Wilde in 1895 during a Victorian clampdown on homosexuality and it was only repealed in 2003.

In 2009 British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologised for the treatment meted to Alan Turing.

It was at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park that Turing and fellow scientists designed and developed Colossus, a truck-sized machine which was one of the world's first programmable electronic computers.

However the work was not widely known beyond academic circles as Britain kept their role in the war secret.

Then Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered that the Colossus computers and 200 so-called Bombe machines, used to crack the Enigma code, be destroyed to keep them secret from the Soviet Union. Bletchley's existence only came to light in the 1970s when the veil of secrecy was lifted.

(With inputs from Reuters)