Ferranti Mark I: Alan Turing

• This is the only known photograph of Alan Turing with a computer. Turing is standing to the side of the control console of the Ferranti Mark I computer in the Computing Machine Laboratory of Manchester University. Seated are Brian Pollard, General Manager of the Ferranti Computer Department (furthest from Turing) and Keith Lonsdale, Chief Engineer of Ferranti Computer Department (centre).
  
• Regarding the date, Simon Lavington said: "The Turing photo: definitely in Coupland St. Alan Ellson, a Ferranti commissioning engineer who was there when the pic was taken, said the date was “late spring/summer 1951 but in any case in preparation for the publicity that attended the Inaugural Conference in July”. The Turing shot was one of a number of similar posed shots; the two I’ve seen show, respectively, John Bennett (Ferranti) posing and Tom Kilburn posing. Significantly, I’ve not seen a shot with FC posing, even though he was the main man. I assume FC was too busy and/or disinclined to pose." (email to Jim Miles, December 2019).
  
• The image has been used in both L-R reflections. The correct orientation is with Turing standing on the right of the image. The correctly oriented image was included in the 50th anniversary web pages and on p22 of Simon Lavington's book "A History of Manchester Computers"
  
• This photo was taken in the building constructed for the Computing Machine Laboratory that now forms a part of the Coupland I building (the pattern of parquet floor tiles and the arrangement of the air ducting above the machine confirms that). The machine subsequently moved with the Department of Electrical Engineering into its new building on Dover Street (now the Zochonis Building). That move happened during Spring and Summer of 1954, but Turing passed away on 7th June 1954. His secretary, Sylvia Robinson (Wagstaff) reported that he was not seen in the Computing Machine Laboratory very much during the latter months of his life and so it is probable but unprovable that he never used the machine in the Dover Street Building. The date of this photograph is therefore sometime between the installation of the machine (February 1951) and Turing's death in June 1954. It was taken for Ferranti, most likely for sales purposes in which case it would have been taken early in that period. There is a more definitive statement of the date in a note above, which is consistent with these observations. It is possible that a record of the date exists in the Ferranti photo catalogue that is now (2022) in the ICL archive in the Science Museum Library in Wroughton.
  
• There are two original prints of this photo in the ICL archive held by The Museum of Science and Industry at their Wroughton archive. There is a good quality print in section 8/13 of the ICL archive and a much poorer copy in 8/15/15 that has a full set of markings on the back indicating origin. The information on the back of the print shows that it was print DC-9 in the Ferranti Sales photo collection index and that the photographer was M.S. In ICL collection reference 8/15/15 there is also a card index for the photo collection that lists the photographers of all the photos and decodes the initials of the photographers. This shows that M.S. was M.S Services Ltd of 23 Old Street Ashton Under Lyne. M.S. stood for Mayfair Studios, a business in Ashton Under Lyne owned and run by photographer Henry Evison.
  
• The University holds an original print of this photo in the Departmental archive: Cabinet A2_File 1_Item 8 (General File 1.1 The Baby Era Item 8) along with two copy prints and a photocopy. The best quality digital image in this archive was created by the John Rylands University Library from the Department's original print.
  
• P2115A is a glass lantern slide that is a member of this set. It has a label on it "Slide No. DC 43 Photo No. DC 9". These are Ferranti reference numbers. The photo number corresponds to the print numbers of the prints collection in the ICL collection at Wroughton, presumably there was a separate index for slides with different numbering.

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This is the best of set $set148, which contains images IMG0019, JRL22230033, P2115A, P4134J6-HJK15-8A, page11b, SHL0112G and SHL0162G. ID: JRL22230033. 6500x5101 (+TIFF) . Copyright: unknown. Collection: Scans of prints and negatives in the University archives. No source artefact.

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Set edited 10-Jun-2024 (Jim Miles)

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