16/07/2019
Yesterday bought the news that Alan Turing will feature on the new £50 note, which is to be released into circulation by the end of 2021. This will be the last of our bank notes to switch to the new polymer style from the old paper format.
The new £50 Turing note will enter circulation by the end of 2021, and will feature:
a photo of Turing taken in 1951 by Elliott and Fry, and part of the National Portrait Gallery's collection;
a table and mathematical formulae from Turing's 1936 paper "On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem" - foundational for computer science;
the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) Pilot Machine - the trial model of Turing's design and one of the first electronic stored-program digital computers;
technical drawings for the British Bombe, the machine specified by Turing and one of the primary tools used to break Enigma-enciphered messages;
a quote from Alan Turing, given in an interview to The Times newspaper on 11 June 1949: "This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be";
his signature from the visitor's book at Bletchley Park in 1947; and
ticker tape depicting Alan Turing's birth date (23 June 1912) in binary code. The concept of a machine fed by binary tape featured in Turing's 1936 paper.
This is great news, although it is worth noting that the £50 note is hardly cmmm currency for most of us. It is nonetheless good to see that, following on from the royal pardon that was awarded posthumously in 2013, his massive contribution to science and the significant part he played in bringing an end to World War II have led to his being immortalised on a banknote.
The ongoing existence of the £50 may actually be a bit of a surprise, or maybe rather than a surprise, slightly puzzling.
Most people rarely, if ever, use £50 notes for their personal transactions. Personally, I believe I have only ever done so a couple of times in my lifetime; both times related to the purchase or sale of a car.
Nowadays, such transactions would be handled electronically.
Peter Sands, the former chief executive of Standard Chartered bank, described the £50 note as the "currency of corrupt elites, of crime of all sorts and of tax evasion". The government did have a discussion about whether to abolish it.
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