Alan Turing papers worth £397k saved from export
"This is a powerful example of what can be achieved when private and charitable sectors come together," she said."This collaboration has ensured that these treasures will be preserved for years to come."In the UK, significant cultural objects require a licence to be exported.Items considered too important to leave can be placed under a temporary export ban, which allows British buyers time to raise funds to purchase the items instead.Once digitised, they will become part of the Turing Papers online archive, freely available to scholars.
The papers, valued at more than £397,000, relate to the Delilah project, which developed a portable encryption system - or voice scrambler - to protect secrets during military operations.Turing worked on the project at Hanslope Park, near Milton Keynes, in 1943 following his groundbreaking work on the Enigma machines at Bletchley Park.The documents consist of more than 40 pages of unpublished notes written by Turing and colleague Donald Bayley.Unpublished evidence of Turing's work has rarely survived.
The project to save the documents was led by the Friends of the Nations' Libraries charity.Other donors included the National Heritage Memorial Fund and King's College.The algorithmic trading firm XTX Markets donated £250,000.King's College provost Gillian Tett said: "Alan Turing's work laid the foundations of computer science, artificial intelligence and much of our modern world."We are honoured to house the Delilah papers at King's and are deeply grateful to our partners in this endeavour."Turing arrived at King's College as an undergraduate in 1931 and was made a fellow in 1935.The Turing Archive was founded in 1960 following a donation of his papers by his mother, Sara Turing.Turing died of cyanide poisoning in June 1954. His death was thought to be suicide.
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