Special Monopoly edition celebrates Alan Turing's life

  • Published
Close-up of William Newman's hand-drawn board
Image caption,

The special edition comes with a facsimile of a hand-drawn version Turing played on

The life of computer pioneer Alan Turing has been commemorated in a special edition of Monopoly.

The board's London landmarks, and its Community and Chance cards, have been swapped for places and events important in Turing's life.

Players can move their pieces from his birthplace in Maida Vale to Hut 8 at Bletchley Park.

Search giant Google has bought 1,000 of the sets and donated them to Bletchley Park to help raise funds.

The board of the special edition is based on a hand-drawn variant of Monopoly created by William Newman in 1950. William was the son of scientist Max Newman who was a key figure in Turing's life.

The hand-drawn version was thought to have been lost but was rediscovered in 2011 and donated to the Bletchley Park museum soon after.

"Bringing this board to life has been one of the most exciting and unique projects we've been involved with here," said Iain Standen, head of the Bletchley Park Trust.

The special board has Bletchley Park, the wartime centre of the Allied code-cracking effort, taking the place of Mayfair, swaps houses and hotels for huts and blocks and has Turing's face on all the banknotes.

The commemorative edition also includes a facsimile of William Newman's hand-drawn board. Google has helped with the production of the board by buying up the , external copies of the game. Funds raised by the sale of the game at Bletchley Park will aid the heritage site's reconstruction project.

Media caption,

Experts, gathered at a Turing centenary conference in Cambridge, give their views on what his greatest intellectual contributions are

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