Il logo Apple e Alan Turing

La pagina Facebook Life is a Movie il 21 luglio 2022 ha pubblicato questo post:

“Alan Turing ha messo fine alla propria vita il 7 giugno 1954. Ha morso una mela con il cianuro e ne ha mangiato un morso. Lo ha fatto perché il governo britannico lo ha castrato chimicamente, umiliato e processato perché gay. Per questo motivo c’è una mela morsa sul logo Apple… In onore di Alan Turing. Inventò la scienza informatica e utilizzando i suoi primi disegni decifrò il codice Enigma – la macchina criptata che i nazisti e l’esercito tedesco usarono per comunicare comandi segreti tra loro durante la guerra mondiale – di conseguenza ha salvato milioni di vite umane e ci ha portato a l’era moderna dell’informatica.

Il mese dell’orgoglio non è solo ballare sui carri in pantaloncini dorati e sventolare una bandiera arcobaleno. Si tratta di ricordare che ognuno ha il diritto di essere felice, amare chi vuole amare e riconoscere il contributo notevole che tutti possono dare in una società libera da paura o pregiudizi”.

Vi riporto le parti salienti.

CB: When did you design the original Apple logo with the colorful stripes?
RJ: Early 1977. The agency got the account (Apple) sometime January. The logo was introduced with the new product Apple II in April of that year.
CB: Did you get a brief from them?
RJ: Really there was no brief. But the really funny thing was the only direction we got from Steve Jobs is: “don’t make it cute”…

…There was a logo previous to my logo. It was a logo done by Ron Wayne who was a very brief partner of the two Steves early on…

…Ron did a pen and ink drawing of Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an Apple tree with a poem all around the border. And, I think when Steve Jobs started to get serious about the Apple II and getting a prototype for the design of the shell he realized that logo would not do. So he needed a new logo.

CB: How many versions did you do for the presentation?
RJ: We presented two versions of the logo. One with and one without the bite… When I presented I showed him several variations. Striped version, solid color version, metallic version. All those with the same shape.

CB: Do the colors represent the hippy culture, which was in fashion at the time?
RJ: Partially it was a really big influence. Both Steve and I came from that place, but the real solid reason for the stripes was that the Apple II was the first home or personal computer that could reproduce images on the monitor in color. So it represents color bars on the screen. Also, it was an attempt to make the logo very accessible to everyone, especially to young people so that Steve could get them into schools.

Ma la parte che c’interessa per davvero di più è quella in cui si parla propriamente di Turing:

CB: Is it possible you were influenced subconsciously by these stories? (Adamo ed Eva, Newton, il byte informatico ndmaicolengel)

RJ: Well, I’m probably the least religious person, so Adam and Eve didn’t have anything to do with it. The bite of knowledge sounds fabulous, but that’s not it. And there is a whole lot of other lore about it. Turing the famous supposed father of computer science who committed suicide in the early 50’s was british and was accused of being homosexual, which he was. He was facing a jail sentence so he committed suicide to avoid all that. So, I heard one of the legends being that the colored logo was an homage to him. People think I did the colored stripes because of the gay flag. And, that was something really thought for a long time. The other really cool part was that apparently he killed himself with a cyanide laced apple. And, then I found out Alan Turing’s favorite childhood story was Snow White where she falls asleep forever afrer eating a poisoned apple to be woken up by the handsome prince. Anyway, when I explain the real reason why I did the bite it’s kind of a let down. But I’ll tell you. I designed it with a bite for scale, so people get that it was an apple not a cherry. Also it was kind of iconic about taking a bite out of an apple.

Lo ammetto, la storia del morso fatto apposta per far capire che si trattava di una mela e non di una ciliegia la conoscevo da ben prima di aprire BUTAC, probabilmente era una storia già diffusa nei circuiti degli appassionati di computer negli anni 90 del secolo scorso.

Quello che però è importante è sfatare la leggenda urbana raccontata da Life is a Movie, e dai tanti altri che da anni insistono nel condividerla. Sia chiaro, concordiamo che sia una bella leggenda e che sarebbe bello se fosse andata come raccontato, ma siccome lo stesso creatore del logo ha spiegato chiaramente che non è così trovo davvero sciocco insistere nel condividerla.

Come ripetiamo spesso ci vuole pochissimo a raccontare una bugia, smentirla costa tanta fatica.

Non serve aggiungere altro.

maicolengel at butac punto it

Se ti è piaciuto l’articolo, sostienici su Patreon o su PayPal! Può bastare anche il costo di un caffè!
Un altro modo per sostenerci è acquistare uno dei libri consigliati sulla nostra pagina Amazon, la trovi qui.