Alan Turing’s notebook containing the foundations of mathematics and computer science has been sold at auction in New York for a little over $1,000,000.
The Enigma Code breaker’s handwritten notes, which date from 1942 when he worked at Bletchley Park, are now in the hands of an unknown buyer.
They were entrusted to mathematician Robin Gandy after Turing committed suicide in Wilmslow in 1954.
Whilst the papers were deposited at the Archive Centre at King’s College in Cambridge in 1977, Mr Gandy retained the 56-page notebook because of a deeply personal message written in the blank centre pages of the notebook which he wanted to keep private.
Those that have seen the notes says they show that he was searching for a universal language for his recently devised universal computing machine devising a way through the philosophical steps needed for human and computer to work together.
There are fears now that the notes may be lost to Britain forever amid criticism over how am export licence could have been granted for such an important piece of scientific history.
