#TuringTour: Tweeting Our Turing Exhibition

To celebrate Alan Turing’s birthday this week, curator David Rooney gave the #TuringTour, a tweeted live tour of our Codebreaker exhibition.

The full tour can be seen here, but we’ve pick out a few highlights for you below…

Our #TuringTour starts with Pilot ACE, probably the most significant #Turing object ever http://t.co/AhloRzaZRV pic.twitter.com/L1uocI4OiZ

— Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) June 18, 2013

Pilot ACE is the computer #Turing designed, and was in its day, the fastest computer in existence #TuringTour pic.twitter.com/GrgS3suSQp

— Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) June 18, 2013

But what was it used for? On display you'll find two unexpected answers: aviation & molecular biology #TuringTour pic.twitter.com/CO1XbyIdjy

— Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) June 18, 2013

Next on the #TuringTour, we turned to computing before computers, when computers were actually people and mostly women

Women like Beryl Waters, who worked at the Science Computing Service, solving important maths problems #TuringTour pic.twitter.com/37YvRlym6p

— Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) June 18, 2013

Some computers were mechanical rather than electronic, such as this 1934 Meccano differential analyser #TuringTour pic.twitter.com/JS73LvIs9q

— Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) June 18, 2013

War is, as ever, a powerful stimulus for innovation. Examples include this bomb aiming computer:

The cams, rods, gears and linkages physically embody the problem to be solved http://t.co/rpdYBtCyX0 #TuringTour pic.twitter.com/kJDYNkAzfe

— Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) June 18, 2013

But if Alan Turing is famous for one thing, it is his work at Bletchley Park on naval Enigma and German ciphers

This Enigma machine was the first on public display, donated by GCHQ (successor to Bletchley) in 1980s #TuringTour pic.twitter.com/NZOEYNpjiv

— Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) June 18, 2013

We ended the tour with a rather poignant question…

What might Alan Turing have achieved if he had lived beyond 41? #TuringTour pic.twitter.com/uN8zouifNl

— Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) June 18, 2013

Over 370 tweets were sent using #TuringTour from as far away as Denmark, Chile and the USA. We also had some great feedback from followers:

Fantastic #TuringTour tweets from @sciencemuseum. Bringing objects and history to life. Great celebration of a great man.

— Kate 📷🥾🐶🌳 (@pritchardkate) June 18, 2013

@sciencemuseum really enjoyed the virtual tour, thank you so much. Will have to come and see it in real life now!

— Jennifer Deane (@jen_deane) June 18, 2013

If you've not been following @sciencemuseum 's #TuringTour tonight then your evening has almost certainly been wasted.

— Rufous (@rufous) June 18, 2013

Thanks to all of you who followed the tour, and you can discover more about the Codebreaker exhibition here.

By Will Dave on 19 June 2013

#TuringTour: Tweeting Our Turing Exhibition