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Restoring Bletchley Park, birthplace of modern computing
5. August 2011
Late last year Google
backed the bid
to buy the papers of the British computer scientist and wartime codebreaker
Alan Turing
and return them to their rightful home at
Bletchley Park
. We were thrilled when this was finally
achieved in February
.
Now we’ve joined forces with the Bletchley Park Trust to help raise funds to rebuild Block C, the original wartime building that once housed the vast punched card index—in essence, the “search engine” at the heart of Bletchley Park’s decryption activity.
Block C at Bletchley Park, awaiting restoration
Bletchley Park played a pivotal role in computing history. For decades the extraordinary achievements of its veterans were hidden by order of the UK’s Official Secrets Act. It was not until the 1980s that the full secret of
Colossus
—the world’s first electronic programmable computer—was revealed. Housed at Bletchley Park, Colossus and other custom-built machines were crucial aids in the code-breaking, reputed to have
shortened World War II
by two years.
Tony Sale, leader of the Colossus rebuild project, demos it
at the National Museum of Computing
Today, Block C is derelict. We hope to help restore it to serve as a visitor and learning centre for both
Bletchley Park
and the UK’s
National Museum of Computing
. The fund-raising campaign kicked off this week with a Google-supported
garden party
in the Bletchley Park grounds, at which over £10,000 was raised. We still have a long way to go, though, so if you’d like to contribute,
please donate
at the Bletchley Park website.
If you’re in London, Bletchley Park is less than an hour away by train, and well worth an afternoon’s visit. You can see a working replica of Colossus, along with many other exhibits highlighting wartime work at Bletchley Park and the UK’s rich computing heritage.
Posted by Peter Barron, Director of External Relations for Europe, Middle East and Africa
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