双语畅销书《艾伦图灵传》第8章:水银延时线(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.
他们死乞白赖地去挖威廉姆斯，不惜把所有的设计都推倒重来。They contemplated handing the construction to Wilkes, when he had only 'a mechanic and a boy' and incompatible design principles.
他们还打算把制造工作交给威尔克斯，哪怕他的想法与所有的设计都完全相反。
They paid for Huskey to come over from America because of his experience 'on the apparatus side', and then failed to use it.
他们又花钱从美国雇来一个哈斯基，因为他有"硬件方面"的经验，但其实却根本用不上。Finally they had appointed, as the head of an electronics section, a man without motivation or experience for the job in hand.
最后他们终于任命了一个电子部门的领导，但这个人却对他要承担的工作没有任何兴趣和经验。The one person whom they had not trusted was Alan Turing.
他们似乎盲目地信任所有的人，却唯独不信任图灵。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.
他们始终没有采纳他的建议：招募并培训工程师。It was certainly not easy to find such expertise, but ultimately, they had not really tried.
也许这确实不容易，但他们从来都没有试过。After this happened, Alan withdrew.
于是，图灵打算退出，他不想继续在这里扯淡了。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.
编程工作仍然在进行，他们成功地实现了浮点数算法，还有矩阵和微分方程的数值算法。But Alan had lost interest in this work, although he spent time on what he called 'abbreviated code instructions'.
图灵还实现了"助记指令码"，These took up the ideas announced in his original report, of having the computer expand its own programs.
这是他在原始报告中提出的想法，计算机可以基于这个来扩展自己的程序。They made, in effect, a high level language for the computer, long before such things were developed elsewhere.
他们创造了高级程序语言，这比其它地方的发展领先了许多年。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.
但是这些都留不住图灵了，他已经对这里的工作失去了兴趣。他在思考如何让计算机体现智能，而国家物理实验室在这方面却没有任何帮助。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.
达尔文与沃默斯利同意了他的想法。7月23日，达尔文向科学与工业研究部汇报，说ACE项目已经进展到"下厂制造"的程度了，既然他的设计者要"为了一种魔咒而辞职"，那么也不是什么大不了的事。It was agreed that Alan should spend a year at King's to develop his theoretical ideas.
他们认为图灵确实应该回到国王学院，去研究他的理论。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.
图灵在体制内的事业生涯，结束得似乎有点太早了，但是科学与工业研究部将他视为一个特例，同意他离开。
