British design quest

Originally Posted by The Basket

Er.....yeah....
The early P-40's had Allisons but the later P-40's had Merlins....just like the Mustang.

Your right mate, was not sure, I had to double check!

http://www.aviation-history.com/curtiss/p40.html


Cheers

Rich

I forgot to include the Spanish Messerschmitt Me-109's, the Hispano Ha-1112 "Buchon", that were re-engined with merlins...

Hmmm....I have decided to give up on Aeroplanes and 'Get a life'.

I think I may take up motorcycling. Does anyone know of any nice shiny ones I can buy?

And take up a career in Computing....no nerds or geeks there....

[Biker Biggles]

Have you considered a "Spondon Merlin"?You wont need the two stage supercharger as long as you don't take it higher than the odd Alpine pass.

Originally Posted by El Boccadillo

I stand to be corrected but, I think the Internet concept was the US Military, but the WWW is accredited to Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

While we are at it, why isn't Colossus, the world's FIRST real computer and invented and largely built by Sir Tommy Flowers, not on the list?

The WWW is a part of The Internet. DARPA joined LANs up to make a sort of de-centralised (and hopefully) indesctructable way of storing and moving data about the place. An internet is 2 or more LANs joined up. The Internet is the whole shebang, gopher, WWW, finger, Instans Messenger, runs on loads of differant protocols, HTTP, FTP, SSH, IMAP, POP, Telnet etc.
The WWW is just something that runs on the Internet. Its the bits you see with your HTML browser. And, Tim Berners Lee, who is english, defined up how it works. Except he did it in CERN, in Switzerland. So, its sort of English. I suppose.

Just want to say, while Flowers was the engineer on the Colossus project, Alan Turing was what it was all about. I didnt even think of Turing when I saw this. Because, he is not in the same class as the guys who designed Spitfires, and E-Types, and Cateyes.

I think Alan Turing is one of the most important people to have lived.

First the bloke basically defined what computer science was. He set out what is and isnt fundamentally computable. Every single computer under your desk is just a generalisation of a Turing machine. They all behave according to the rules set out by Turing.

Then he designs the first computer, the Bombe and The Colossus.

Then, with the help of these machines, him (along with his team) broke the Enigma... which was at the very least fundamental for winning the 2nd world war.

He then completely designed the first stored program (Von Neumann architecture) computer.

Doing any one of these things, is greatness. To do what he did, puts him up there with Newton, Darwin and Einstein. Honestly, he is that important.

And, now...the kicker.

He was gay. And... because of this he was harrased, jailed, forceably druged, untill he couldnt take it any more, and he killed himself.

I have no doubt that Intelligence, the British Military knew this. They knew full well, and they were happy to have him help win WWII (even thought gays were not allowed in the UK Military). But, afterwards the same people harrased him to death. And, now almost no-one knows about him.

And I think this is one of the saddest stories in history.

The Concorde won it.

Hmmm....

I didn't know France was British? Do the French Know?

Ah well...A time when the UK could build such things....sigh....

Nice one phillipMac

Turing is gone and not forgotten.

He remains a fine example of the crass stupidity of discriminating against people on the basis of sexuality (or religion, ethnic background and on and on)

They had no problem with his sexuality when they needed him at Bletchley Park.

Unfortunatley he was embroiled in a police investigation some years after the war and was told he was to be outed as a 'pervert'. He took the honourable way out...

RIP

Originally Posted by huge

Nice one phillipMac

Turing is gone and not forgotten.

He remains a fine example of the crass stupidity of discriminating against people on the basis of sexuality (or religion, ethnic background and on and on)

They had no problem with his sexuality when they needed him at Bletchley Park.

Unfortunatley he was embroiled in a police investigation some years after the war and was told he was to be outed as a 'pervert'. He took the honourable way out...

RIP

Thanks man.

Sometimes this whole gay thing just gets me really angry. The amount of pain it has caused, and causes. The amount of lives, and fights.
My uncle was gay, and killed himself.
My girlfriends grandfather was gay, and killed himself.

Its just so pointless. My uncle was a very smart Mathematician, but had to leave Ireland. He was treated with drugs.

I mean, jesus christ, Alan Turing HELPED YOU WIN WWII. He fundamentally changed ALL OF SCIENCE. Do you think that he deserves even a small bit of privacy? He is literally as great as Darwin, Einstien, etc.

How horrifically stupid can people be to decide that they are going to persecute you because you like to be with men more than women. And, now they ignore him. The English basically ignore one of their truely great people.

When they made that film, about turing, "Enigma", a couple of years ago, they turned him into a heterosexual guy. And changed his name.

I mean... words fail me. How can people ignore history like this? If Stalin was gay, do you ignore everything he did to?
No. Because, Stalin was bad. And, everyone would know that, on top of that, he was a homo.

But, they ignore Turing. Make a film about him, make him straight, and ignore the all the facts.

[northwind]

Strangely enough, when Neal Stevenson included Turing as a character in Cryptonomicon, and depicted him (funnily enough) as gay, he was threatened with legal action by his estate. It seems like they actively want him to be either remembered as straight, or forgotten as gay