Three parts (including the rare supplement), as published in Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society: Series 2, Vol. 42 - Part 3 (Nov. 30, 1936), pp.230-240; Series 2, Vol. 43 - Part 4 (Dec. 23, 1936), pp. 241-265; Series 2, Vol. 43 - Part 7 (Dec. 30, 1937), pp. 544-546. 10¼x6¾, original printed wrappers, rebacked in similar paper.

First appearance of the foundation stone of modern computing, written by Alan M. Turing. The "Turning Machine" theoretically designed in these seminal papers is an abstract representation of a computing device. It consists of a read/write head that scans a (possibly infinite) one-dimensional (bi-directional) tape divided into squares, each of which is inscribed with a 0 or 1. Computation begins with the machine, in a given "state", scanning a square. It erases what it finds there, prints a 0 or 1, moves to an adjacent square, and goes into a new state. These groundbreaking ideas were to lead to Turing's development of the "Bombe" in the early days of World War II, the device which was to break the vaunted German Enigma cipher, instrumental in the defeat of Nazi Germany. Born in 1912 in London, Turing attended King's College, Cambridge University, studying quantum mechanics, probability and logic. Following the submission of the present papers, he went to Princeton, where he studied for three years before returning to England where he began working on the Enigma problem. Following World War II, he continued his work on computing and artificial intelligence. A gay man, he was arrested in 1952 and tried as a homosexual, losing his security clearance. He died in 1954 of cyanide poisoning, ruled suicide by the coroner, though his mother believed he had ingested the poison from his fingers after an amateur chemistry experment. The present set of the three seminal papers, each issue complete with the papers by other contributors, is in the rare original wrappers; they were possibly formerly bound in a single volume, with the spines expertly rebacked, and with speckling to the top edges.