A new iPhone app tells the story of Alan Turing's life at King's. The app uses letters, images and manuscripts from the Archive Centre to illustrate a walking tour of the college grounds, and show parts of the college that were important in Turing's life.
The tour was written by the former Assistant Archivist at King's, Tracy Wilkinson, and built with the technical support of Rama and Crimson Bamboo.
The tour is free. To get it you need to download the Rama travel app first, which you can find in the app store at iTunes. Once you've got that, you can search through the app for individual tours. The King's tour is 'Alan Turing@King's College'. See the Rama website for details. Unfortunately there is no Android version of the tour yet.
The app is released in time for the centenary of Turing's birth this Saturday 23 June. King's will have its own celebration this Saturday as it unveils a blue plaque to Turing in a ceremony on the front lawn (see the news story). For more Turing-related events this year see the Turing Centenary website.
Alan M Turing (1912–1954) came to King's in 1931 as an undergraduate, and was elected a Fellow in 1935. He was a renowned mathematician famous for his code-breaking work in World War Two, and a pioneer of computer science. He is sometimes referred to as the 'father of modern computing'. His family donated many of his documents to the Archive Centre here after his death.