Alan Turing’s ‘Delilah’ Project Papers at risk of leaving the UK

An export bar has been placed on Alan Turing’s unpublished Second World War papers relating to the ‘Delilah’ project, which developed a portable encryption system for use in military operations.  

The papers are valued at £397,680 (inclusive of VAT of £16,280 which can be reclaimed by an eligible institution), and are at risk of leaving the UK unless a domestic buyer can be found to acquire them. 

Following Turing’s groundbreaking work on the Enigma machines at Bletchley Park, he began work on the ‘Delilah’ project at Hanslope Park to develop a portable encryption system or voice scrambler to protect military secrets in the field.

The papers consist of two bound notebooks and six separate gatherings of loose sheets. It comprises the notes of Alan Turing (1912-54) and Donald Bayley (1921-2020) relating to the World War Two project ‘Delilah’. 

Unpublished evidence of Alan Turing’s work has rarely survived. Turing himself did not usually keep research notes, working drafts, or correspondence. This collection of papers dating from 1943 to 1945 sheds light on some of Turing’s most inventive, secret, and overlooked work.

Shortly after the Second World War ended in 1945, the Delilah machine was complete and Turing was able to demonstrate the working machine successfully, which showed a recording of one of Winston Churchill’s speeches, using a system which encrypted and decrypted communications from telephone and radio devices.

Alan Turing’s work prefigured our modern digital world and his work at Bletchley Park is seen as being crucial to ending the Second World War early and saving many lives.  His post-war work formed the foundations of computer science as we know it today.  Alan Turing was later awarded an OBE for his work during the Second World War.

Main Image: Photo courtesy of the U.K. Department for Culture, Media and Sport.