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Episode details

BBC,14 mins

Alan Turing's "Can Digital Computers Think?"

BBC Archive

Available for over a year

Actor, writer, comedian and Turing fan Mark Gatiss re-voices the influential text from 1951. On the 15th of May 1951, the mathematician Alan Turing delivered a lecture on the BBC Home Service called "Can Digital Computers Think?" This was a part of a series of lectures on the emerging science of computing which featured other pioneers of the time, including D.R. Hartree, M.H.A. Newman, F.C. Williams and M.V Wilkes. No recording exists of Turing’s broadcast, but his original paper script, with his handwritten notes and markings, remains in the BBC Written Archive. With thanks to the Turing Archive at King's College Cambridge. Produced by David Hyde.

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