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by arethuza 1127 days ago
Not to be confused with the Glasgow-based Turing Institute which did do some very cool stuff back in the 1980s/1990s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Institute

Founded by Donald Michie who worked at Bletchley Park!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Michie

1 comments

I worked at the Turing Institute in Glasgow in the summer of 1992, and just recently ran into an old colleague who was one of the original founders, who confirmed a funny story I'd heard:

Donald Michie once overheard his secretary explaining to someone over the phone how to pronounce his name, in a thick Scottish accent:

"It's Donald, as in Duck, and Michie, as in Mouse."

He was so pissed off, he refused to speak to her for a month! ;)

The Turing Institute put on the First Robot Olympics in September 1990 (check out the cool retro robot photos!):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Robot_Olympics

My favorite photo is the walking pizza box fascinating the kids:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Robot_Olympics#/media/Fi...

One of my favourite's was the name of the C to PostScript compiler PDB - being Glasgow: "Pure Dead Brilliant".

Edit: I never did use it, I'd got quite happy writing PostScript!