雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第8章:水銀延時線(97)
It was a curious sequence of events, in which the NPL administration had done everything possible to avoid 'building a brain'.
They had chased after Williams, although it would mean a complete redesign to use the kind of storage he was developing.
他們死乞白賴地去挖威廉姆斯，不惜把所有的設計都推倒重來。They contemplated handing the construction to Wilkes, when he had only 'a mechanic and a boy' and incompatible design principles.
他們還打算把製造工作交給威爾克斯，哪怕他的想法與所有的設計都完全相反。
They paid for Huskey to come over from America because of his experience 'on the apparatus side', and then failed to use it.
他們又花錢從美國僱來一個哈斯基，因爲他有"硬件方面"的經驗，但其實卻根本用不上。Finally they had appointed, as the head of an electronics section, a man without motivation or experience for the job in hand.
最後他們終於任命了一個電子部門的領導，但這個人卻對他要承擔的工作沒有任何興趣和經驗。The one person whom they had not trusted was Alan Turing.
他們似乎盲目地信任所有的人，卻唯獨不信任圖靈。The one policy they had not adopted was that of finding or training engineers to effect the proposals to which they had agreed in 1946.
他們始終沒有采納他的建議：招募並培訓工程師。It was certainly not easy to find such expertise, but ultimately, they had not really tried.
也許這確實不容易，但他們從來都沒有試過。After this happened, Alan withdrew.
於是，圖靈打算退出，他不想繼續在這裏扯淡了。The programming work continued, and they went a long way with subroutines for floating-point arithmetic, including matrices and the numerical solution of differential equations.
編程工作仍然在進行，他們成功地實現了浮點數算法，還有矩陣和微分方程的數值算法。But Alan had lost interest in this work, although he spent time on what he called 'abbreviated code instructions'.
圖靈還實現了"助記指令碼"，These took up the ideas announced in his original report, of having the computer expand its own programs.
這是他在原始報告中提出的想法，計算機可以基於這個來擴展自己的程序。They made, in effect, a high level language for the computer, long before such things were developed elsewhere.
他們創造了高級程序語言，這比其它地方的發展領先了許多年。But he was thinking more about the even higher level that he had announced in February, that of making a computer show intelligence. In this respect there was nothing to be gained by working at the NPL.
但是這些都留不住圖靈了，他已經對這裏的工作失去了興趣。他在思考如何讓計算機體現智能，而國家物理實驗室在這方面卻沒有任何幫助。Darwin and Womersley concurred in this opinion, and on 23 July Darwin wrote to the DSIR that since the ace had now reached the stage of 'ironmongery', it would be best if its designer were to 'go off for a spell'. The separation of brain from hand could not have been made more explicit.
達爾文與沃默斯利同意了他的想法。7月23日，達爾文向科學與工業研究部彙報，說ACE項目已經進展到"下廠製造"的程度了，既然他的設計者要"爲了一種魔咒而辭職"，那麼也不是什麼大不了的事。It was agreed that Alan should spend a year at King's to develop his theoretical ideas.
他們認爲圖靈確實應該回到國王學院，去研究他的理論。It was too early in his Civil Service career for this to be a normal 'sabbatical year', but the DSIR and the Treasury were persuaded to treat him as a special case.
圖靈在體制內的事業生涯，結束得似乎有點太早了，但是科學與工業研究部將他視爲一個特例，同意他離開。
