I highly recommend to watch "The Imitation Game" movie. It follows the biography of Turing. Glad to see old geeks being recognized by society. Now we need USA to put Dennis Ritchie on their bills.

"Turing was homosexual and was convicted in 1952 of "very indecent behavior". Homosexuality was forbidden back then. He could not deal with that and two years later he died of cyanide poisoning. Research has shown that it was suicide. In 2009 the British government posthumously apologized." He couldn't just handle that, he was chemically castrated as punishment, which is what really did it for him in terms of coping. Not the only one for being punished for "Indecent Behavior" either. One of the reasons why the UK government have not apologised for the rest is because some of them are still alive. If they admit fault then that opens up the possibility of litigation. Far cheaper to do it posthumously.

Thats ironic really, we are getting a new plastic £50 note like the rest of them that stays bent..:D:p

I have never seen £50 notes in years of living in London... and if you try to use one (I had a couple) many places simply refuse them. The irony...

Well deserved

buhehe:

I have never seen £50 notes in years of living in London... and if you try to use one (I had a couple) many places simply refuse them. The irony...

isn't it against british law to refuse legal tender?

sverek:

I highly recommend to watch "The Imitation Game" movie. It follows the biography of Turing. Glad to see old geeks being recognized by society.

Saw it, good movie.His deciphering methods were so effective that the Brits could not act on them too much so as not to tip off the Germans their codes were cracked. Lives were lost as a deliberate strategy to that end.

buhehe:

I have never seen £50 notes in years of living in London... and if you try to use one (I had a couple) many places simply refuse them. The irony...

It pays to know your rights. Legal tender CANNOT be refused, by law.

alanm:

Saw it, good movie.His deciphering methods were so effective that the Brits could not act on them too much so as not to tip off the Germans their codes were cracked. Lives were lost as a deliberate strategy to that end.

History of code breaking in Bletchley Park is fascinating - and it wasn't just Turing, he's become a figurehead but there was a large team that did this. They broke not just enigma (which just sent short messages) but the Lorenz cipher, which was much more important. Where as enigma would be used for things like refuelling u-boats (so the allies knew where they'd come up and hence could bomb them), Lorenz sent much longer high command messages - e.g. the full plan for battle sent directly by Hitler. Then there's all the double agents the Brits had feeding false intel. Throughout the whole war the German's never believed their ciphers and agents had been broken. In fact even the British and American army commanders had trouble believing how thoroughly the British had broken German intelligence and famously refused to listen when they were told exactly what the German's were going to do. They also made the first programmable computer there - a BT engineer called Tommy Flowers made it. But post war it was all top secret and no one talked about it till many many years later (that BT engineer - the guy who made the first computer - actually went back to working for BT post war). Lots of stories and well worth a visit to Bletchley Park if you are ever in the area (it's a museum now).

Astyanax:

isn't it against british law to refuse legal tender?

Probably it is same as Canada but if they refuse are you going to call a cop? They sometimes refuse 100 dollar bills around here not too often but it happens.

England: DXR ON 😀

jbmcmillan:

Probably it is same as Canada but if they refuse are you going to call a cop? They sometimes refuse 100 dollar bills around here not too often but it happens.

This I can confirm. Don't even try to buy a coffee with anything more than a 20, they already cringe with 50s. Reminds me I still have to go to the bank and deliberately tell them what notes I want for my travels in September. Too bad the old 5s aren't around anymore... I'll probably not see a Spock bill this time. Here in Austria there's some rule saying it's dependant on the price of whatever you buy... not every company has to take a 100€ bill to buy a pack of chewing gum, iirc. But: Yes, put scientists onto bills! 100% support on my side. In Austria, before the € was introduced, we had the following people on our bills: 20 - Daffinger: painter and sculptor 50 - Sigmund Freud: famous neurologist and phsychoanalyst 100 - von Bawerk: economist 500 - Otto Wagner: famous architect and urban planer; later Ms. Mayreder: female rights activist 1000 - Erwin Schrödinger: physicist, without cat; later Landsteiner, biologist and doctor who discovered blood groups 5000 - Mozart. Now it's boring bridges. 'nough said.

Well here in the UK people wont accept £50 notes as they dont have enough change Its rare i see 1 to be honest,, would have been better if they put him on the new 20s coming next year

You can only use the legal tender argument in the UK where a debt exists prior to payment, I.e. the person you owe the debt to cannot refuse legal tender to settle the debt, a good example of this would be a fuel station, where you fill you car etc prior to payment or restaurant where you eat the food before payment, thus the debt exists before payment. on the other hand shops have every right to refuse sale to ANY person, and on that basis there is no pre-existing debt, given the goods haven't been legally transferred to yourself via the mechanism of sale nor has "debt" been created per se as the goods can be simply given back.

Good trend having famous scientists or inventors on currency.

This is a nice step in the right direction. I'm not exactly sure why of everyone they could've chosen, they picked Turing (there are other British people arguably more famous than him), but, I'm glad they did. He deserves the recognition.

Astyanax:

isn't it against british law to refuse legal tender?

In some cases, I wonder if it might be like the $2 bill or $0.50 coin in the US: they are legal tender, but they're rare enough that some shopkeepers or cashiers don't recognize them. Since a lot of those older currencies have little to no anti-counterfeit measures, I wonder if there is actually an exception to deny them.

Nice one. His story is quite fascinating to say the least. It's such a shame how he ended up, especially considering his contribution to the war effort. But then again, those were different times, if he were born even 1-2 centuries earlier he would have had an even crueler fate.

b101uk:

You can only use the legal tender argument in the UK where a debt exists prior to payment, I.e. the person you owe the debt to cannot refuse legal tender to settle the debt, a good example of this would be a fuel station, where you fill you car etc prior to payment or restaurant where you eat the food before payment, thus the debt exists before payment. on the other hand shops have every right to refuse sale to ANY person, and on that basis there is no pre-existing debt, given the goods haven't been legally transferred to yourself via the mechanism of sale nor has "debt" been created per se as the goods can be simply given back.

I've heard of cases where the police won't do a thing if an establishment refuses the legal tender.

Haven't used notes or coins in many years now, i just use contactless and paypal

Astyanax:

I've heard of cases where the police won't do a thing if an establishment refuses the legal tender.

Why would they? I've had scottish notes refused a bunch down in england, you can scream legal tender all you want but they won't take it. I'm not calling the police for that lol, the next shop down the road would probably take it no bother. It's up to a shop if they do or do not want your patronage, so 50 notes, scottish notes outside scotland are rarely seen and unknown to a local place, they don't want to accept the possibility of a counterfeit (50 notes being a high target for that, hence many small shops have signs saying no 50s accepted). These aren't much an issue now with chip & pin and contactless, in fact it'd be more suspicious probably now trying to pay for things in £50 or £100 notes