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Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

bankofengland.co.uk

101–110 of 226 posts

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#101
post #13

These announcements always make me ponder about the people we'll put on bank notes or erect statues in honour of in 50 years and are alive and persecuted today but not recognized by society.

[flagged]

Based on what accomplishments?

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think either of those deserve to be mentioned in the same way as Alan Turing, and no amount of time passing will change that. Note that Alan Turing was persecuted for what he was , not for what he did . I also don't think there will be an ACM award named for either.

> Note that Alan Turing was persecuted for what he was, not for what he did . No, he was prosecuted for having sex with other men. That is something he did. Being homosexual was never illegal.

The law against homosexual sex does nothing to increase the welfare of their fellow man and prevents individuals from finding fulfilling love. It was an evil law and people should be proud for defying it not ashamed because their love was stronger than your hate.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#103
post #23

It's good that Turing gets put on a banknote - and about time. However, the concept art in that article is really ugly. I'm not that familiar with British banknotes - are they usually that messy looking? Every piece of text is in a different font, and it seems pretty vulgar to have a quote on the note at all. There's even drop shadows! It honestly looks like something I'd put together in Corel Draw in the mid-2000s.

I just got back from a trip to the States and I have to say that US money is very boring by comparison to UK money. How on earth do blind/old people deal with the fact that all denominations are practically the same size, design, colour etc?

I recently moved to the US and I hate its coins. To the point that I consider all of them unusable. When I get home, I leave all the coins that I received as change on a plate by the door, hoping someday I will bring all of them at once somewhere to change for bills (I believe there are machines that do this).

My complaints:

i) They do not have numbers on them!! You have to read words to know the value

ii) To make point i) worse, they have nicknames printed on some of the coins!! They do not write "ten cents", it is "one dime". They do not write "twenty-five cents", they write "quarter dollar" (even the unit here changes)

iii) To make points i) and ii) worse, there is no default place where the value is written. $0.01 is a horizontal banner. $0.10 and $0.25 are round-based by the edge of the coin. $0.05 is round-based, but not by the edge of the coin, just slightly above another text that is by the edge.

iv) The coins do not obey a coherent progression of value and size. From smallest to largest the coins are: $0.10 v) The colors are all the same, except for the $0.01 coin.

So when you have a bunch of coins, you have to properly spread them in your hand to be able to compare their sizes (which is hard when the items are circles), account that there is no size-value correlation, and if you do not remember by size; you have to read a tiny sentence, lost in the middle of several other sentences, with no typographic differentiation of where they are.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#104
post #10

Perhaps the continuing decline in the currency's value will give us an opportunity to see £50 notes more frequently. I don't think I've seen one more than twice in the past 12 years, and I get cash out less and less frequently.

Yeah, it's really strange.

50 quid now is worth substantially less than 20 quid was when I was younger and 20's weren't weird then.

It just has this weird stigma. ATMs don't dispense them. I used to carry one around for emergencies, and people would comment on it (ooh, look at this flash prick, etc).

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#105
post #47

These announcements always make me ponder about the people we'll put on bank notes or erect statues in honour of in 50 years and are alive and persecuted today but not recognized by society.

Satoshi Nakamoto? I think Turing was recognised as a great mathematician in his day but still persecuted.

Bitcoin has mainly thus far mostly allowed for some geeks to get rich and some criminals to move around money. It's actual impact on society is best described as it wasted a bunch of electricity.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#106
post #23

It's good that Turing gets put on a banknote - and about time. However, the concept art in that article is really ugly. I'm not that familiar with British banknotes - are they usually that messy looking? Every piece of text is in a different font, and it seems pretty vulgar to have a quote on the note at all. There's even drop shadows! It honestly looks like something I'd put together in Corel Draw in the mid-2000s.

I agree, of all the different kinds of UK notes the latest Royal Bank of Scotland notes are my favourite designs [0] [1]. Make sure to look at both sides. One of the confusing things about bank notes in the UK is that there are 5 totally different designs for each denomination: Bank of England, Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland, Clydesdale Bank and Ulster Bank. This can lead to some confusion when you try to pay someone with a rarer note as they may not have seen them before. Scottish notes are usually OK. Good luck with Ulster Bank notes though. [0]https://www.scotbanks.org.uk/banknotes/royal-bank-of-scotlan... [1]https://www.scotbanks.org.uk/banknotes/royal-bank-of-scotlan...

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#108

Alan Turing's achievements * Designed the programming of world's first commercial computer (Ferranti Mark 1) * Devised Turing Test, to test whether computer is capable of thinking like a huamn * Got an OBE for his wartime services * Inventor of Turing Machine. To this day, all stored-programme digital computers are modelled on this invention * Built the machine that helped in the breaking of the Enigma code used by t…

> His work shortened the WW2 by at least 2 years. If the Reich had lasted longer, they would have gotten the nuke rather than Japan.

Would they have? I don’t pretend to be an expert on plausible alternative history, but as the USSR reached Berlin before the UK/USA/French forces, I can easily imagine that without Turing’s work the Iron Curtain would’ve been either through the English Channel or along the Rhine, while the Pacific war would’ve gone the same way.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#109
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number 9, "check the microlettering": https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/banknotes/... A bigger but not clearer image here: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/5-pound-note

Thanks, that's excellent! I couldn't find a thing just now whereas I could find an example few years ago no problem - is it me or is google search getting totally shit?

I struggle with Google search. I've tried using it like people used to use AskJeeves and sometimes that works and others it just fails.

For this search using the words "bank notes" first in the list of search terms ruined the results.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#110
post #106
post #23

It's good that Turing gets put on a banknote - and about time. However, the concept art in that article is really ugly. I'm not that familiar with British banknotes - are they usually that messy looking? Every piece of text is in a different font, and it seems pretty vulgar to have a quote on the note at all. There's even drop shadows! It honestly looks like something I'd put together in Corel Draw in the mid-2000s.

I agree, of all the different kinds of UK notes the latest Royal Bank of Scotland notes are my favourite designs [0] [1]. Make sure to look at both sides. One of the confusing things about bank notes in the UK is that there are 5 totally different designs for each denomination: Bank of England, Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland, Clydesdale Bank and Ulster Bank. This can lead to some confusion when you try to p…

There's also the Isle of Mann Bank.
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