| Description | Gold does not have a very clear memory of the dates Hodges asks for. Gold is sure that Turing's visit to Witley was before or during the summer of 1945. Gold did have mercury delay lines working in the lab at that time, and probably discussed those with him. He recalls there was a competing water delay line system at Farnborough; Gold thought it much inferior to his own, but has some recollection that NPL wanted at first to use that. Wilkinson at NPL was the person who would know. Possibly Charles Goodwin at NPL knows something to help. At any rate NPL never asked Gold for his design, but Wilkes did.
Gold knows nothing about Turing's relation with von Neumann, etc. He had not seen the great possibilities described anywhere until Turing explained it all to him, with great enthusiasm. He understood the data handling and the commercial possibilities, not just the mathematical. D R Hartree spoke and wrote a great deal about this subject at that time, and Gold would thinik that much could be got from records of that. |