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Bletchley Park wins £4.6m grant

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Bletchley Park wins £4.6m grant

#2

Post by simonw »

That's fantastic news.

I was at Bletchley Park last weekend for Over The Air, a mobile development conference/hack day. It's a truly extraordinary place - if you haven't been yet, you have a real treat in store.

They've already done a fantastic job bringing the place to life, and the working reconstructions of both Colossus (the first electronic programmable computer) and Alan Turing's Bombe (the mechanical device that cracked Enigma) are both completely spellbinding. They also do a really good tour.

Re: Bletchley Park wins £4.6m grant

#6

Post by jgrahamc »

0x12 wrote: post #4

JGC will be pleased as punch with this: http://blog.jgc.org/2010/01/1000-for-bletchley-park-thanks-t... Great to see that Bletchley Park will live on, it's one of very few historical sites that have meaning to those that are interested in our digital beginnings.

Yes, I am pleased as punch. Especially since when the Alan Turing petition was successful I bent the ear of the then Prime Minister about funding Bletchley Park. Not long after a small amount of lottery funding was announced that enabled them to make the bid for this larger amount. I don't know whether that was really because of me, but it doesn't matter. This news is great.

Here's the email I sent to Downing St. summarizing the situation on September 11, 2009:

  Kirsty,

  As you can imagine I have an Inbox filled with 
  media requests and congratulatory notes from 
  around the world.  A common theme in these
  mails is a desire to see a memorial of some 
  kind to Alan Turing.

  Three suggestions (in order of popularity):

  1. Find some way to fund Bletchley Park and the
  National Museum of Computing.
  2. Use the Fourth Plinth for a Turing statue
  3. Name the marathon at the 2012 Olympics after
  Turing (he was a very good marathon runner and 
  it's his centenary in 2012).

  All of these are good suggestions.  If the government 
  did #1 you would have my full backing.

  John.
It is bloody marvellous that they have got the money to improve the site. I triply love Bletchley Park because of: (a) The codebreakers part (b) The National Museum of Computing and (c) it is now the home of the National Radio Centre (for all the UK hams out there) and I studied to be a radio amateur there with MKARS.

Re: Bletchley Park wins £4.6m grant

#8

Post by tomstuart »

simonw wrote: post #2

That's fantastic news. I was at Bletchley Park last weekend for Over The Air, a mobile development conference/hack day. It's a truly extraordinary place - if you haven't been yet, you have a real treat in store. They've already done a fantastic job bringing the place to life, and the working reconstructions of both Colossus (the first electronic programmable computer) and Alan Turing's Bombe (the mechanical device th…

It is excellent, and the money is well-deserved.

I wonder whether any of this money will trickle down to the National Museum of Computing (http://tnmoc.org/) at Bletchley Park? That museum is the main thing that gets me returning to Bletchley on a regular basis, but they seem to be constantly struggling for cash in their ongoing battle to keep half a century's worth of computers in working order. On a selfish level, I'm just as interested in preserving that aspect of Bletchley's (and Turing's) heritage.

Re: Bletchley Park wins £4.6m grant

#9

Post by ra »

simonw wrote: post #2

That's fantastic news. I was at Bletchley Park last weekend for Over The Air, a mobile development conference/hack day. It's a truly extraordinary place - if you haven't been yet, you have a real treat in store. They've already done a fantastic job bringing the place to life, and the working reconstructions of both Colossus (the first electronic programmable computer) and Alan Turing's Bombe (the mechanical device th…

It is fantastic news. It's only recently that the UK government apologized for Turing's post-war mistreatment, which tragically led to his suicide at the age of 42.

I only recently learned of Turings seminal work on mathematical biology; he demonstrated that much of the complexity found in nature is the result of simple algorithms. His concepts we learn about today in fields such as fractals and Chaos theory.

It's possible that Alan Turing might have one become one the all time great scientist had he survived to live out his career.

Bletchley Park is very high on my to do list next time I'm in the UK - along with IWM Duxford [1].

[1] http://duxford.iwm.org.uk/

Re: Bletchley Park wins £4.6m grant

#10

Post by DanBC »

The history is important, and I'm really pleased they got some money. They still need a bit more. And really, in the scheme of things, a couple of million is not much for such an important site. I am worried about them being able to get it, especially at the moment.

It's a bit depressing that programming and that kind of thinking is neglected in the curriculum.

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