The clock is ticking
A frantic campaign is under way to save what could be the most complete collection of World War Two code breaker Alan Turing's work.
One supporter of the Bletchley Park Trust is desperately trying to raise money to purchase a collection of Turing's published papers and offprints for permanent public display at Bletchley Park, where Turing worked as a codebreaker.
Turing, a mathematician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist who died in his 40s has only just received public recognition for his work, some of which will be auctioned off by Christie's including 15 of his 18 published papers.
It is thought to be the largest collection in the world, put together by Turing's friend and fellow Bletchley Park codebreaker, Professor Max Newman, to whom Turing presented the offprints.
Now Turing fan Gareth Halfacree is trying to rally support from the public to snap up the work, which could form part of a permanent collection at Bletchley.
"They belong in a dedicated museum but Bletchley Park can't afford the £300,000 to £500,000 guide price. As a result, I'm asking for volunteers to dig deep and see to it that these papers not only stay in this country but stay where the public can see them and benefit from them. Let's save them from being locked away in the vaults of a private collector," he said.
William Newman, the son of Max Newman, said: "The offprint collection's value derives mainly from its completeness; indeed it may be the most complete collection of Turing's works in the world. This has come about because Turing started to give offprints to Max Newman before he had published the Computable Numbers paper. He subsequently gained a large following, who were interested mainly in his follow-on work. In fact Turing published only 18 papers."
With mere days left before the auction which takes place on 23 November, Halfacree has urged the public to do what they can and will no doubt be hoping that a deep-pocketed philanthropist will step in and save the day at the last minute. The campaign has so far raised around £13,000 and is 3 percent of the way to meeting its target.
Turing's work is the latest piece of computer history to spark the public's imagination with a fundraising effort under way to build Charles Babbage's Analytical Machine and an Apple-1 computer possibly built by Jobs and Wozniak expected to fetch around £150,000 at auction- in the same sale as the Turing papers.
Here is an image from Christie's auction house of the Turing papers for sale.
