Lectures, scientific papers, top secret wartime material, correspondence, and broadcasts are introduced and set in context by Jack Copeland, Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing."--Jacket.

The mathematical genius Alan Turing, well known for his crucial wartime role in breaking the ENIGMA code, was the first to conceive of the fundamental principle of the modern computer. This text contains first hand accounts by Turing and by the pioneers of computing who worked with him on his revolutionary design for an electronic computing machine - his Automatic Computing Engine.