Turing papers close to being shredded sell for £465,000

AMAZING ARCHIVE OF CODEBREAKER'S WORK HAD BEEN GATHERING DUST IN LOFT OF A LONDON HOME

- By ED CHATTERTON, SWNS

A TREASURE trove of scientific papers by codebreaking war hero Alan Turing have fetched almost £500,000 at auction after being saved from being shredded.

The cache of some of the mathematical genius' most important work was discovered gathering dust in a loft at a property in Bermondsey, London.

The incredible archive was gifted to former Guildford resident Turing's best friend, but it was almost destroyed after being found during a house clearance.

The papers were saved at the last minute when their significance was recognised at a family event and they went under the hammer in Etwall, Derbys, on Tuesday (June 17).

They included his personal signed copy of his 1938 PhD dissertation, 'Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals' which sold for £110,500.

Also featured was his paper 'On Computable Numbers, also known as 'Turing's Proof, which introduced the world to the idea of a universal computing machine in 1936.

Described as the first program-ming manual of the computer age, it fetched a staggering £208,000 from a guide price of £40,000 and £60,000.

Phone bidders competed against internet bidders worldwide, includ-ing in China and the USA, to secure the historic items for a 'record' amount.

Rare Book Auctions estimated the collection would sell for £150,000 but it made more than three times that to fetch a total of £465,400, with buyers premium.

Auctioneer Charles Hanson said some of the items from the hoard were among “the most important lots I've sold in my time”.