Haigh offers arguments that counter the promotion of Alan Turing as the inventor of the digital computer. The root of this claim from Turing’s promoters is his 1936 paper, “On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem,” where he describes what is now known as the Turing machine.

The article’s most convincing argument compares Turing’s paper to John von Neumann’s 1951 document, “First draft of a report on EDVAC,” which contains notes and specifications on the development of this pioneering computer. The article uses these as proof of the disconnection between Turing’s abstract method to solve a class of mathematical problems and von Neumann’s concrete solutions to design and build, at the time, the world’s most advanced stored-program computer.

Turing’s story is impressive and even inspiring, which helps build the misconception: unrecognized war hero, persecuted homosexual, polymath genius. But the article asserts that Turing’s status as inventor of the computer came retroactively, when academics were establishing computer science as a credible academic pursuit. According to the article, Turing’s work had little influence on the practical aspects of early digital computers.