A benchmark for UK innovation

Next time you're in Manchester, take a detour to Sackville Park, close to Canal Street. You'll see a dapper figure sitting on a park bench.

He's smartly dressed, with his hair slicked back. He's holding an apple and staring intently into the distance. He's there day and night.

This isn't the beginning of a sad story. In fact, it's quite the reverse - a happy ending to a heroic and, at one time, tragic tale. The man is Alan Turing.

It has taken nearly half a century since his death in 1954 for us to honour Turing with this simple statue, unveiled this week.

Computing readers will know that Turing's work on cryptography led to the breaking of the German Enigma code in the Second World War. He is now recognised as one of the fathers of modern computing through his pioneering theoretical work (and, in research left uncompleted, artificial intelligence).

In his lifetime, Turing was persecuted for his private life, which led to his suicide (by poisoned apple) and the loss of much of his work - research which, had it been built upon, could have put the UK in the vanguard of the post-war information technology revolution.

More than anything else, Turing was a man devoted to his work, and heroism was the last thing on his mind, although his achievements arguably altered the course of the war. But Turing is a prophet without honour in his own country.

Despite his efforts, it has fallen to a handful of local businesses to cobble together the funding for the monument. They say that vendors from Microsoft to, appropriately enough, Apple, declined to back the project.

One major IT giant is said to have responded by sending the project's organisers a set of mugs.

Computing has seen countless promising technologies, from terabyte storage on a credit card, through generative software to rewritable hardware, developed by UK entrepreneurs. Per ardua ad astra (through adversity to the stars) is an expression that BT has borrowed for its research facility, Adastral Park.

But in the UK, per ardua ad nauseam is often nearer the truth, along with the suspicion that such ideas can only succeed if the developers decamp to the US.

How many Turings have passed through the UK's universities and research institutes over the years? How many have turned a homegrown idea into a homegrown technology venture, funded within these shores? It's a rhetorical question.

How many, such as the world wide web's prime mover, Tim Berners-Lee, found the best listeners and an encouraging funding structure in the US or continental Europe?

Computing is delighted that the government-backed Cambridge-MIT Institute is promoting further partnerships between business and academia, and winning corporate sponsorship from BT, BP and other giants with a vested interest in innovation.

We're also delighted that the Government is further relaxing some of the bureaucracy that has hamstrung entrepreneurship to date. If only we had done it sooner.

But with funding for technology projects harder than ever to come by, let's hope that our belated move to invest strategically out of the IT industry downturn will be seen by history as a turning point in our relationship with the business of technology.

Just ask the man on the park bench what he thinks.