Alan Turing proposed an abstract model of computation in which rules and the reading and writing of symbols describe an algorithm's execution. It addressed which problems could be calculated through mechanical steps.
A Turing machine does not require a particular physical construction. These ideas helped establish the theory of computation; Turing later also worked in cryptanalysis and computer research.
Historical background: computational machinery
… the emphasis is on programming a fixed iterable sequence of arithmetical operations. The fundamental importance of conditional iteration and conditional transfer for a general theory of calculating machines is not recognized…
The Entscheidungsproblem (the "decision problem"): Hilbert's tenth question of 1900
10. Determination of the solvability of a Diophantine equation. Given a Diophantine equation with any number of unknown quantities and with rational integral coefficients: To devise a process according to which it can be determined in a finite number of operations whether the equation is solvable in rational integers. The Entscheidungsproblem [decision problem for first-order logic] is solved when we know a procedure that allows for any given logical expression to decide by finitely many operations its validity or satisfiability... The Entscheidungsproblem must be considered the main problem of mathematical logic.
Behmann remarks that... the general problem is equivalent to the problem of deciding which mathematical propositions are true.
If one were able to solve the Entscheidungsproblem then one would have a "procedure for solving many (or even all) mathematical problems".
By the 1928 international congress of mathematicians, Hilbert "made his questions quite precise. First, was mathematics complete... Second, was mathematics consistent... And thirdly, was mathematics decidable?" The first two questions were answered in 1930 by Kurt Gödel at the very same meeting where Hilbert delivered his retirement speech (much to the chagrin of Hilbert); the third—the Entscheidungsproblem—had to wait until the mid-1930s.
The problem was that an answer first required a precise definition of "definite general applicable prescription", which Princeton professor Alonzo Church would come to call "effective calculability", and in 1928 no such definition existed. But over the next 6–7 years Emil Post developed his definition of a worker moving from room to room writing and erasing marks per a list of instructions, as did Church and his two students Stephen Kleene and J. B. Rosser by use of Church's lambda-calculus and Gödel's recursion theory (1934). Church's paper (published 15 April 1936) showed that the Entscheidungsproblem was indeed "undecidable" and beat Turing to the punch by almost a year (Turing's paper submitted 28 May 1936, published January 1937). In the meantime, Emil Post submitted a brief paper in the fall of 1936, so Turing at least had priority over Post.
While Church refereed Turing's paper, Turing had time to study Church's paper and add an Appendix where he sketched a proof that Church's lambda-calculus and his machines would compute the same functions.
But what Church had done was something rather different, and in a certain sense weaker.... the Turing construction was more direct, and provided an argument from first principles, closing the gap in Church's demonstration.
Alan Turing's a-machine
To the question 'what is a "mechanical" process?' Turing returned the characteristic answer 'Something that can be done by a machine' and he embarked on the highly congenial task of analysing the general notion of a computing machine.
I suppose, but do not know, that Turing, right from the start of his work, had as his goal a proof of the undecidability of the Entscheidungsproblem. He told me that the 'main idea' of the paper came to him when he was lying in Grantchester meadows in the summer of 1935. The 'main idea' might have either been his analysis of computation or his realization that there was a universal machine, and so a diagonal argument to prove unsolvability.
It was stated above that 'a function is effectively calculable if its values can be found by some purely mechanical process'. We may take this statement literally, understanding by a purely mechanical process one which could be carried out by a machine. It is possible to give a mathematical description, in a certain normal form, of the structures of these machines. The development of these ideas leads to the author's definition of a computable function, and to an identification of computability with effective calculability. It is not difficult, though somewhat laborious, to prove that these three definitions are equivalent.