Martin Stewart: Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
I spent a great day at Bletchley Park yesterday. We were for about 6 hours and I don't think we saw half of it. The grounds are beautiful on a nice day, there are lots of trees around the Mansion House and the huts in the grounds. We didn't do the tour, but I've done it maybe four or five times before and it's really worth spending some time hearing more about the war time history of the place. Visiting Hut 8 where Alan Turing worked is poignant, it is one of the few huts that has been restored and looking at the other huts the Trust really could do with the money to get work started.
I spent too long looking at the ICL 2966 in the National Museum of Computing and waffling on at some poor volunteer about my memories of operating one back in the mid eighties. They have it running and without aircond or running disk drives that's quite an achievement.
I got some great photographs of the lake and buildings but we didn't go to see the model railway, the enigma exhibition, we didn't even go into the mansion house (although we did go into the cafe twice). Bletchley Park was instrumental in saving so many lives during World War 2 and the use of Colossus in cracking Lorenz is so important in computing history. The museum must be one of the most important sites in this country in terms of computing and how it can be used.
Bletchley have been offered a grant by the Heritage Lottery Fund but only on condition that they raise £1.7 million themselves. The website for more information about that is here:
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/contact/donation/support.rhtm
You can see my photographs of the site here:
http://gallery.polaris.org/main.php?g2_itemId=78524
Published by Martin Stewart on 500px
I spent a great day at Bletchley Park yesterday. We were for about 6 hours and I don't think we saw half of it. The grounds are beautiful on a nice day, there are lots of trees around the Mansion House and the huts in the grounds. We didn't do the tour, but I've done it maybe four or five times before and it's really worth spending some time hearing more about the war time history of the place. Visiting Hut 8 where Alan Turing worked is poignant, it is one of the few huts that has been restored and looking at the other huts the Trust really could do with the money to get work started.
I spent too long looking at the ICL 2966 in the National Museum of Computing and waffling on at some poor volunteer about my memories of operating one back in the mid eighties. They have it running and without aircond or running disk drives that's quite an achievement.
I got some great photographs of the lake and buildings but we didn't go to see the model railway, the enigma exhibition, we didn't even go into the mansion house (although we did go into the cafe twice). Bletchley Park was instrumental in saving so many lives during World War 2 and the use of Colossus in cracking Lorenz is so important in computing history. The museum must be one of the most important sites in this country in terms of computing and how it can be used.
Bletchley have been offered a grant by the Heritage Lottery Fund but only on condition that they raise £1.7 million themselves. The website for more information about that is here:
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/contact/donation/support.rhtm
You can see my photographs of the site here:
http://gallery.polaris.org/main.php?g2_itemId=78524
Published by Martin Stewart on 500px