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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Science
Nadeem Badshah

Wartime codebreaker Alan Turing’s scientific papers sell for £465,000 at auction

Portrait of Alan Turing among his scientific papers
His paper On Computable Numbers, described as the first computer programming manual, sold for £208,000. Photograph: @RareBookAucts

A cache of Alan Turing’s most important scientific papers have been sold for £465,000 at auction, more than three times their expected sale price, after being saved from the shredder.

It had been estimated that the collection would sell for £150,000 in 13 separate lots but it fetched a total of £465,400 on Tuesday, which is understood to be a record for Turing material.

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