Collection of Turing Papers Saved from Auction
The Bletchley Park Trust announces a big breakthrough in its effort to secure a rare collection of Alan Turing’s offprints. The collection belonged to Turing’s close friend and fellow code breaker, Professor Max Newman. It includes 16 offprints of Turing’s published works including his historic paper On Computable Numbers.
The Turing-Newman Collection went on the auction block months ago and at first it appeared they may go to a private collector. A campaign to save the papers, started by IT journalist Gareth Halfacree, produced individual donations, support from Google, and a large grant, announced Thursday, from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF). This combined effort has produced enough funds to secure the Collection. They will be put on display at Bletchley Park later this year.
Bletchley Park Trust CEO Simon Greenish says, “We are delighted to have the collection here at Bletchley Park, which is surely its most fitting home, and it will be an incredible addition to the visitor experience.”
Read a news release from Bletchley Park.
Lots of news coverage about this story. Here are just a few links:
- Check out this story from BBC.
- Here’s one from Associated Press.
- Also, you may be interested in this article from The Guardian.
- And there also one from The Wall Street Journal.