CommunityNews

CommunityNews

Alan Turing – The Delilah Project

Bonhams : TURING (ALAN) - THE DELILAH PROJECT The papers of Alan Turing and Donald Bayley relating to the Delilah project.
The papers of Alan Turing and Donald Bayley relating to the Delilah project, a wartime collaboration seeking to develop a speech encryption system, including Turing’s mathematical proofs and Bayley’s transcriptions of Turing’s lectures on electrical circuit theory, comprising: i) Laboratory notebook, recording the results of experiments testing the performance of Delilah’s various electrical circuits, the first 12 pages and 8 adjacent graphs in Turing’s hand, including 7 line diagrams concerning the development and testing of the Key Generator (“Measurement of ‘A ₂ -pulse’ for Multivibrators”, “Measurement of ‘Heaviside function’”, “Second Experiment for measurement of the A ₂ -pulse”, “Linearity Test for Pulse Modulation”, “6H6 Characteristic”, “Repetition of Linearity Test…”, “… with various grid leaks”, “Characteristic of H3 Rectifier”, “Harmonic Analyser Output Stage Characteristics”, “Relative Response of Harmonic Analyser v. Beat freq.”, “Relative response versus input”), blue ink and pencil; additional single loose leaf of voltage calculations written in three columns; the following 12 pages in Bayley’s hand, including 4 graphs, blue ink and pencil; the final 18 leaves of later notes by Bayley on mundane household matters such as decorating and DIY projects, written in blue biro; later note in Bayley’s hand clipped to first page “Notebook/ Used in/ Delilah Development/ With Notes In/ Turing’s Hand”, 70 leaves (23 blank), dust-staining and marks, some water damage to front endpaper and first leaf, original green board covers, pencil inscription “4/-” upper right corner, stained and worn, 4to (258 x 204mm.) , [Hanslope Park, 1943-?1945 and later]; ii) Turing’s autograph mathematical calculations headed “Bandwidth Theorem”, his proof written out for Bayley, and incorporating a line diagram, further notes on logic formulae in pencil on reverse of first leaf, black ink, 3 pages on two leaves, some marks, creased at horizonal fold, 4to (289 x 220mm.) ; accompanied by Donald Bayley’s later autograph note “Delilah is an application of the bandwidth theorem. This is Turing’s proof. He wasn’t the first to do so…”; iii) Turing’s ‘Red Form’ autograph mathematical notes possibly relating to Delilah’s key generator and the Fourier Theorem, 13 numbered leaves, in pencil on the blank reverse of ‘Red’ (or Intercept) Forms (Army Form C2133), with 7 additional leaves in Bayley’s hand and another unidentified hand, 3 of these possibly in the hand of Turing, 20 leaves, dust-staining, frayed, 4to (250 x 189mm.) ; iv) Turing’s autograph mathematical calculations headed “Determination of cut-off volts”, comprising a diagram with equations beneath, dark blue ink on the reverse of a red-printed Y Service Form S.323, filled in with pencil notes logging intercepts from Forfar on 23 November 1943, one page, perforations at lower edge, roughly torn on left hand side, three filing holes, frayed, 4to (249 x 197mm.) ; v) Turing’s autograph mathematical calculations headed “Faltung”, including a line diagram, explaining the mathematics of convolutions, using the shape of a mushroom as an analogy, in blue ink, on the reverse of a red-ruled radio log sheet stamped with the names of various intercept stations in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Norfolk, Devon and Cornwall (‘Thurso’, ‘Cupar’, ‘Sandridge’, ‘Stockland’, ‘St Erth’, ‘Wymondham’) dated 9 August 1942, intercepted enemy transmission frequencies logged in pencil, with the note ‘Reported By Hanslope. No trfc.’ And ‘No fix. Poss between Genoa and Naples area’ in red ink, one page, filing hole top left, some show-through of red ink from reverse, ink blots, dust-staining, sheet frayed and creased, closed tear not affecting text, 4to (262 x 195mm.) ; vi) Bayley’s school file titled ‘Queen Mary’s School/ Walsall’ in gilt on upper cover, the contents prefaced with a later note by Donald Bayley (“Some University maths notes but mainly notes of training given by Alan Turing during after dinner sessions at Hanslope Park. Some pp in his own hand…”), containing 90 leaves (180 numbered pages) of Bayley’s transcriptions of lectures given by Turing on mathematics for electrical engineers at Hanslope Park, prefaced by a 2-page reference list of standard mathematical forms in red ink; some 140 further leaves of Bayley’s notes taken at university including sections on “Statics” and “Kinematics”, c.14 sheets of calculations loosely inserted, some on orange or pink paper, several blank pages, Bayley’s ownership inscription and address inside upper cover in ink (“20 Chantry Ave/ Walsall/Staffs”, “D. Bayley./ Birmingham University/ Elect Eng Dept.”), 230 leaves dust-staining, discolouration and marks, edges frayed, the majority 4to, some on smaller lined paper, all contained in ‘Loxton’ binder by Hunt & Broadhurst Ltd., Oxford, worn, 4to (278 x 235mm.) ; vii) Bundle of loose notes written by Turing and Bayley found in the file, including two foolscap leaves by Turing concerning different electrical problems and Bayley’s summary notes concerning topics covered in Turing’s evening lectures, cross-referencing his lecture notes (“Submarine cable see p.40 of notebook”), c.6 pages in Turing’s hand, the rest in Bayley’s and an unidentified hand, ink and pencil, 13 leaves in all, 6 written on reverse of Red Forms, dust-staining, creased and frayed, some loss, 4to (250 x 189mm.), two foolscap leaves 325 x 200mm., one leaf 227 x 288mm. ; viii) Turing’s autograph mathematical calculations headed “Problem… Discuss the convergence of the sequence x…”, probably written out carefully for Bayley’s benefit, densely written in dark blue ink, 2 pages, creased at horizontal fold, 4to (288 x 215mm.) .

Read in full here:

This thread was posted by one of our members via one of our news source trackers.

Where Next?

Popular General Dev topics Top

First poster: mafinar
The following languages will help current and new web developers navigate the programming landscape to code web-based services and apps t...
New
New
First poster: dimitarvp
On Wednesday last week, Google’s Fiona Cicconi wrote to company employees. She announced that Google was bringing forward its timetable ...
New
First poster: AstonJ
We engineered a wearable microphone jammer that is capable of disabling microphones in its user’s surroundings, including hidden micropho...
New
First poster: dyowee
Everyone seems to be striving for ‘clean’ code at the moment. You can’t read a blog post without the author telling you how clean their a...
New
CommunityNews
We’re a tiny team @deepseek-ai pushing our limits in AGI exploration. Starting this week , Feb 24, 2025 we’ll open-source 5 repos – one ...
New
First poster: alvinkatojr
There are countless articles why developers should not focus on Frameworks too much and instead learn to understand the underlying langua...
New
CommunityNews
The French originated the meter in the 1790s as one/ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the north pole along a meridian thr...
New
New
CommunityNews
GitSyncPad is an innovative micro keypad designed for effortless Git version control. Execute commands like git add, git commit, and git ...
New

Other popular topics Top

brentjanderson
Bought the Moonlander mechanical keyboard. Cherry Brown MX switches. Arms and wrists have been hurting enough that it’s time I did someth...
New
New
New
AstonJ
You might be thinking we should just ask who’s not using VSCode :joy: however there are some new additions in the space that might give V...
New
AstonJ
We have a thread about the keyboards we have, but what about nice keyboards we come across that we want? If you have seen any that look n...
New
Exadra37
On modern versions of macOS, you simply can’t power on your computer, launch a text editor or eBook reader, and write or read, without a ...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
“Finding the Boundaries” Hero’s Journey with Noel Rappin @noelrappin Even when you’re ultimately right about what the future ho...
New
AstonJ
Saw this on TikTok of all places! :lol: Anyone heard of them before? Lite:
New
CommunityNews
A Brief Review of the Minisforum V3 AMD Tablet. Update: I have created an awesome-minisforum-v3 GitHub repository to list information fo...
New
AstonJ
Curious what kind of results others are getting, I think actually prefer the 7B model to the 32B model, not only is it faster but the qua...
New