Slashdot Mirror
Queen Elizabeth Sets a Code-Breaking Challenge
mikejuk writes "Queen Elizabeth II has made her first ever visit to Bletchley Park, the home of the UK's World War II code-breaking efforts and now a museum. To mark the occasion, the Queen has issued a code cracking challenge of her own — 'the Agent X Code Book Challenge' — aimed at getting children interested in cryptography. Perhaps a royal programming or general technology challenge is next."
It is good to hear isn't it?
Finally the old place is getting some attention. I've been there a couple of times now. it's a great old place, it was important for the war, and it's something of a spiritual home for the computer.
Colossus may not have been the very first (there was a german machine?) and it was certainly kept secret for far too long after the war, but some lasting good leaked out of it through Turing's papers. It was one of a series of false starts that slowly, eventually led us here.
Of course the pioneer, the early bright light of our field was hounded to death for being gay, a man who had saved many lives and sped the end of the war. If there is one thing that should tell us homophobia is *bad* this is it.