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Restored Bletchly Park Opens
Graculus (3653645) writes with this excerpt from the BBC: Codebreakers credited with shortening World War Two worked in Bletchley Park, in structures built to last only a few years. Now, following a painstaking restoration, they have been brought back to life and Wednesday's official opening marks a remarkable turnaround from top secrecy to world wide attraction. With no photographs of the insides to work with, Bletchley Park looked to its most valuable resource — the veterans who worked there. A museum at the site has already been opened.
The structures were once perilously close to being lost forever (until Google stepped in).
Bletchley Park looked to its most valuable resource — the veterans who worked there
...and fired them for daring to show historic computers to visitors. And then kicking out the amateur radio society to replace them with a gift shop, and finally putting up a chain link fence to make sure nobody accidentally visits the real museum in building H.
The only reason the current Bletchley park management haven't levelled the place to put up a Starbucks is that the donors might notice and cut off their multi-million pound gravy train.
I visited BP a few years ago for the first time. I was under a bit of time pressure as I had to take a plane from Heathrow, so only had about an hour to do it all. I wanted to see the Colossus and made my way straight from the entrance office to the back where this is housed. I went through a door and interrupted a guy who was talking to a video camera to make a video presentation. He was REALLY upset at being distracted and let of a fair bit of steam, before he banished me alone to the room where the collossus machines are installed. A couple of minutes later another guy appeared to officially open up, and he too was a bit surprised to find me already there only ten minues after BP had opened for the day. After a short explanation he went and talked to the first guy who came back with him, and a profuse apology and a personal tour of the machines and the closed sections of the nascent NMOC followed. The guy at the video camera turned out to be Dr. Tony Sale, who played a huge part in the campaign to stop BP being turned into a housing estate in the late 80s. It was a fascinating tour, and he got something out of it too: When we came to the mobile device exhibit I commented that he was missing the first touch screen mobile phone / PDA. He said "we would love to have one, but can't find one." Ten days lated he received a package with a mint IBM Simon, which I had kept in the cellar for almost ten years. BTW I missed my plane.
Every one can have an off day, but Dr. Sale had the grace to immediately admit it and turned my frist negative experience into a posistive one that I will never forget. He's probably spinning in his grave right now......
Incidentally, there is also a great museum of computing in Switzerland http://www.enter-online.ch/