Re: The Macintosh is a girl's computer!

J. J. Lodder <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]

By 1952 Turing had become an anomaly.
During the war, with trust being based in the first place
on being 'the right kind of person' Turing could contribute. [1]

By 1952, with cold war hysteria near it's peak

The first (US) hydrogen bomb wasn't exploded until the end of that year
- and that really was a bomb made of hydrogen and completely impractical
as a weapon. It was several more years before the hysteria peaked -
when the Soviets had thermonuclear bombs and missiles to lob 'em with.
The missiles took some time to arrive, but the USSR exploded a
deliverable thermonuclear weapon (not just a test device) at the end of
1954 - *that* is when the hysteria was getting out of hand (thing is,
nukes take a lot of effort to build - it took 'em quite some time to
build up stocks).

The R7A was the first ICBM, and apparently came into service in 1960:

<http://www.russianspaceweb.com/rockets_icbm.html>

(The R7 from which is derives gave rise to this set of launchers:

<http://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz_lv.html> - being liquid fuelled,
it never made a great missile, but it's a bloody good space rocket)

[snip]

[1] In Hodges' summary:
in 1939 the English trusted (the right kind of) people,
the Germans distrusted everybody, and put their faith in machines.
In consequence the UK could use a misfit like Turing
to work something that amounted to almost a miracle.
The Germans otoh never could bring themselves
to believe that their Enigma could have been broken.

I recall reading recently that the bloke in charge of the U-Boats
believed it. I gather he was the only one - the idea I got was that
everyone else in the hierarchy thought he was potty on the subject.

[snip]

Rowland.

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