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No Museum Status For UK Home of Enigma Machine

Posted by timothy on from the but-it-won't-be-a-drive-through-restuarant-until-2012 dept.

hardsix writes "Despite the numerous films, books and plays, celebrating the brilliant achievements of the code-breakers at Bletchley Park, the UK government is still dragging its feet over providing proper support for the site. There has just been a debate in the House of Lords over whether the site should be given similar status to the UK's main WWII museum — the Imperial War Museum. But the government has brushed off the request, claiming that the site has received enough funding recently. However, as was shown by a visit to the site by UK actor, and Twitter-lover Stephen Fry, although devices such as Enigma have been restored many of the huts where the code-breaking work went on are in a bad state and more investment is needed."

5 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Number 10 petition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is also a petition to the government to help save Bletchley Park on the number 10 web site.

    http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BletchleyPark/

  2. Bletchley is NOT the 'home of the Enigma' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    IT was the home of the Colossus, which could decode messages encoded by the Enigma machines:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_park#Cryptanalysis

    Please try and get the simple stuff right. It's what being a geek is about.

    1. Re:Bletchley is NOT the 'home of the Enigma' by 91degrees · · Score: 3, Informative

      Please try and get the simple stuff right. It's what being a geek is about.

      Well, in that case, Colossus was built to break Lorenz. A teletype cypher. Enigma was attacked using electro-mechanical devices known as bombes.

  3. Re:So what? by Poobar · · Score: 5, Informative

    No-one will ever disregard the machine itself- you don't even have to RTFA to see that "devices such as Enigma have been restored". The government are dragging their collective feet over whether to provide funding to restore the *site*, a collection of 70 year old ramshackle huts. The Enigma will live on, in some machine or other. Maybe it'd even be better in another museum- I imagine that the environment of the Science Museum (for instance) is better suited to keeping it in good tradition than a leaky hut in Bletchley.

  4. Re:Turn a park into a museum? by ceejayoz · · Score: 3, Informative

    Uh, what? Bletchley Park is an estate. The buildings would be the museum, not the grass.