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Bletchley Park Gets £4.6 Million Restoration
mikejuk writes "Bletchley Park has secured a £4.6 million Heritage Lottery Fund Grant for the establishment of a visitor center dedicated to the World War II Codebreakers. This year saw the unveiling of a new memorial to the Codebreakers in the grounds of Bletchley Park by the Queen. Shortly after her visit, a new fundraising campaign for the restoration of the iconic huts where the code-breaking teams worked was inaugurated, with help and sponsorship from Google. The grant will enable the restoration of Codebreaking Huts 1, 3 and 6, and create a world-class visitor center and exhibition in the currently derelict Block C. The Bletchley Park Trust has launched the 'Action This Day' campaign to raise the match funding now needed."
This is a really important bit of our recent history. It would be a shame to let it rot away.
I'm a pacifist, so I basically don't want to think about the darker side of war even when it was necessary evil to ensure the freedom of the children and grandchildren of those who fought in the war.
So when I see governments acknowledging the contributions of non-combatants in non-violent roles, I have to congratulate them. Bletchley Park mayn't have ended the war, but it certainly made it shorter and less bloody.
I Wonder if the National Museum of Computing will get any of this ?
Lifesigns: Present Hair: Escaped Age: Increasing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing_Year
It is a shame that on their site there is nothing about polish "coders" who in 1932 broke the enigma code and made it available for British and French intelligence... wiki - in December 1932, the Polish Cipher Bureau first broke Germany's military Enigma ciphers. Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II, on 25 July 1939, in Warsaw, they presented their Enigma-decryption techniques and equipment to French and British military intelligence. Thanks to this, during the war, Allied codebreakers were able to decrypt a vast number of messages that had been enciphered using the Enigma. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
i hope they have recognition for the brave crew of U571 and Matthew McConaughey
Did you miss the point that it was mainly secret in its working days (so it was in a quiet town, in the middle of nowhere, away from German bombs) but is now in a modern-day town where it has zero impact on the local economy, that most of the equipment was destroyed afterwards (and hence what you see is the result of DECADES of restoration work of then-top-secret equipment of which virtually nothing original remains), that the building has been derelict (hence the raising of money) ever since it was *deliberately* cleared and abandoned decades ago? At the moment it is *literally* run by fanatics, not cash, so a few scavenged posters is all they have left after reconstructing all that equipment. Everything else is in planning stages.
You don't preserve the place by turning into The Canterbury Tales with talking characters, etc. especially with ZERO funding that they've had up until now (hence this being a news story that they CAN actually put something there now - and so they should).
Like the Stalag that I went to visit in Germany last year that was nothing more than a bit of grass with some vague building outlines on and a little building with old movies/photos, it was never designed to be a tourist attraction and still isn't except for those who understand what it WAS.
That said, my brother has taken Scout groups to Bletchley several times (he was given a valve-amp, by someone who worked there on the reconstruction, for the kids to study) - so long as you set the scene and explain what's going on there, it's still pretty interesting.
The preservation of it is important but IT HASN'T STARTED. Not properly. For decades it's just been people saying it *should* be preserved but they have literally only just been given the funds to do so - and in ten years time it will be a more interesting place to take your kids.
Personally, I'd rather they built any museum / exhibit close-by and preserved the original buildings as best they could but I doubt it will happen.
... then you're not a true pacifist because thats what most people think. Very few people see war as a laugh. A true pacifist would never advocate war no matter what and would sooner see himself and his entire family tortured and killed than raise an arm in anger. Basically they're simply cowards dressing up their cowardise as a political idiology.
Too bad they can't give Alan Turing his life back.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Is it some kind of magic number?
it was never designed to be a tourist attraction and still isn't except for those who understand what it WAS.
They may not have all the bells and whistles, but the comparison you make to the Stalag site is unfair. Bletchley already has plenty of things of interest to non-nerds, including exhibits geared towards children. And what they may lack in amenities is more than made up for by their superb tour guides. They manage to explain the very complicated codebreaking operations in terms that most people can understand. So no, it's not just for those who 'understand what it WAS'.
SENDM ONEYN OWXXX
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
Hoping for a cut of the money to get it redecorated?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I did my apprenticeship there, before the "new city" of Milton Keynes had been built. The site had been taken over by the post office and the civil aviation authority, both of whom were using it as a technical training establishment. Believe me, the "remoteness" had no "romance" even then. It translated as "dullness". It was never particularly remote anyway, being only a couple of miles from Leighton Buzzard, a couple of miles from Stony Stratford, a couple of miles from Wolverton (about the only place in the area that could beat Bletchley for dullness). They were all separate towns then, although all but Leighton Buzzard have now been swallowed up by Milton Keynes.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Their website, frankly said, visually sucks. Those YellowHawk people are doing themselves a disservice.
They don't seem to have a design document done for consistent use of their logo, nor for consistency among visual elements on the pages. There are tons of annoyances, they didn't even do the most trivial things like color correction on the B/W pictures (say on the history page). I don't claim to be any sort of a highfalutin' designer, but there's a point where things just get too annoying to look at, and all the minor problems add up...
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Nothing gets built in England for less than 10 million.
Given that the lottery is frequently described as a "tax on people who are bad at math," it is a wonderful irony that this money is going to commemorate some of the most important mathematical work in history.
Now that we've decided to renovate the Isle of Kryptos, can we do something about shoring up Greece itself?
What's Osterity?
Being frugal with Ostriches?
Austerity in Österreich?
Yes.