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Dear Jack,

What a great magazine you have. Not only is it useful, but it's¨
filled with great dirt. I actually read it cover to cover. Just¨
one small correction though --

The U.S. did not break the German ENIGMA code. Alan M. Turing¨
did, during WW2, in the British Secret Service. He did it using a¨
paper-tape calculator he designed and built called the Bombe. He¨
did a lot of very basic crypto work. He was a pioneer hacker; a¨
mathematician who taught himself electronics in order to build¨
the world's first all-electronic computers (predating American¨
computers by years.) He was the person who came up with an¨
obscure concept called 'stored program', whereby a machine can¨
modify its own instructions, while working on a seminal problem¨
in mathematics. His British Secret Service work was classified¨
until the 70's. He did other pioneering work in mathematics and¨
biology.

He was also gay, and quite 'out' in the British Secret Service,¨
in the 40's no less. I read about him first in A HISTORY OF¨
COMPUTING IN THE 20TH CENTURY (1980, Academic Press). There's an¨
excellent, highly technical, biography of Turing called ALAN¨
TURING: THE ENIGMA by Andrew Hodges (1983, Simon \& Schuster). I¨
recommend both books to anyone interested in the history of what¨
we're collectively doing here.

Imagine where we would be if he had been censured because of his¨
sexuality. Simply put, we'd have no computers, but only overgrown¨
possibly-programmable calculators, which is where most of the¨
world was heading at that time\dots

(From another gay programmer), Tom Jennings / Fido Software /¨
World Power Systems, Box 77731, San Francisco CA 94107

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