A document produced by the British computer scientist Alan Turing has recently been sold for a staggering figure of nearly £700,000 at an auction house in America, as the bidders' interest in such historical memorabilia was no doubt inspired by the current trend to find out more about the World War II codebreaker. The interest in similar artefacts that have an intriguing story behind them is not unique though, with the upcoming auction of a wooden deckchair that was recovered from the doomed ship the Titanic expected to fetch a figure somewhere in the region of £80,000, when it is sold in the United Kingdom later this week.
Historical pieces seem to be big business at present, as the historians attempt to piece together the unexplained events from our past or to simply revel in the nostalgia surrounding them. Turing's hand-written notebook was an obvious example as it sparked great interest at the Bonhams' auction house, located in New York, as it contained more than 50 pages of the important scientist's notes relating to mathematical notation and the beginnings of computer Science. Experts believe that it is likely to date from the time in the early 1940s when Turing was attempting to break the Enigma code as part of the team at Bletchley Park.
The interest in such ground breaking events has also resulted in films such as "Codebreaker" being made in 2011 which was aired on Channel 4 in the UK, in addition to the critically acclaimed and Oscar winning ('Best Adapted Screenplay') feature Film "The Imitation Game" starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley from 2014.
The 2014 film illustrated the popularity of the topic, as it had grossed in excess of $218 million across the world by April 2015.
