“We may compare a processor with a human mind whose memory is necessarily limited to remembering a finite amount of numbers and perform a finite amount of operations…”  -Alan Turing

The founding document for the modern computer age:
Alan Turing’s “On Computable Numbers”,
Rare first printing in extremely rare original wrappers

Turing, Alan. On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, In Proceedings of The London Mathematical Society, Series 2, vol 42, Part 3 and 4, pp. 230- 265. WITH: On Computable Numbers… A Correction, In, vol 43, Part 7, pp. 544- 546. London: C.F. Hodgson & Son, Ltd., Nov. 30, Dec. 23, 1936 and Dec. 30, 1937. Octavo, original publisher’s printed wrappers. Three issues, each in original wrappers; in custom cloth box.

First edition, first printing, of the “blueprint for what would eventually become the electronic digital computer” (Paul Gray).  A magnificent copy in original wrappers.  Minute, almost invisible glue reinforcement to very small area on two joints; wrappers otherwise spotless and perfect. A truly outstanding copy in original wrappers. Exceedingly scarce.

“Alan Turing, while a mathematics student at University of Cambridge, was inspired by German mathematician David Hilbert's formalist program, which sought to demonstrate that any mathematical problem can potentially be solved by an algorithm, that is, by a purely mechanical process. Turing interpreted this to mean a computing machine and set out to design one capable of resolving all mathematical problems, but in the process he proved in his seminal paper “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem [‘Halting Problem']” (1936) that no such universal mathematical solver could ever exist. In order to design his machine (known to posterity as the “Turing machine”), he needed an unambiguous definition of the essence of a computer. In doing so, Turing worked out in great detail the basic concepts of a universal computing machine, that is, a computing machine that could, at least in theory, do anything that a special-purpose computing device could do. In particular, it would not be limited to doing arithmetic. The internal states of the machine could represent numbers, but they could equally well represent logic values or letters. In fact, Turing believed that everything could be represented symbolically, even abstract mental states, and he was one of the first advocates of the artificial-intelligence position that computers can potentially “think.”

Turing's work up to this point was entirely abstract, entirely a theoretical demonstration. Nevertheless, he made it clear from the start that his results implied the possibility of building a machine of the sort he described. His work characterized the abstract essence of any computing device so well that it was in effect a challenge to actually build one… Turing's work was an inspiration to pursue something of which most of the world had not even conceived: a universal computing machine” (Britannica). Turing’s landmark paper marked a point of discontinuity in the way people thought about the possibilities of machines. Revolutionary in both its detail and scope, “On Computable Numbers,” is widely acknowledged as having launched the modern computer age.