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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).
The sheds are (or were) rotton old sheds. Interesting stuff may happened in them, but they're still sheds.
The crown jewel of Bletchley is the national museum of computing, which is apparently treated like shit by the people who control the property and think the manor is the good bit. It isn't.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I guess you guys will never learn to proofread your headlines.
I would love to see this place. My Dad was a Codebreaker stationed on Panama. I think there must have been Codebreakers all over the place. He didn't talk much about what he did. It seems many WW2 vets were/are quiet about the war. Thanks for bringing attention to this important role in the war. Mary at www.gunhandbags.com , proud daughter of a Codebreaker and supporter of 2nd amendment
In seventy years time people might well be restoring the Utah Data Center as a monument to the War on Terror.
Although unpopular (/phony) wars do tend to get less monuments I guess.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I want to be Slashdot PC on this, but I don't know what side I'm supposed to take. Do we hate this because they were code breakers? Do we like them because it was a long time ago and so we consider them good code breakers, you know, before all this "imperialism" stuff started? Do we hate them because they obviously thought very little of the basic human rights of the Germans on whom they were eavesdropping? Do we like them because Turing worked there? Do we hate them because of how Turing was treated?
I need to get this out there because we need to come to consensus because it either has to be all love or all hate; I'm itching to climb my mountaintop and hurl invectives calling into question the moral turpitude of anyone who disagrees with me, but I don't know which mountaintop I'm supposed to climb! I'm thinking hate because the people who worked there obviously had no morals given that they willingly went and worked for an organization that spies on people. I think we can all agree on that, correct? It is just too bad that it is too late to send those bastards to jail for something.
As a child in Cheshire England before the second world war, "BLETCH" was the black grease one got on ones hands after replacing the chain on a bicycle.
Mum, I've got Bletch all over my hands, can I have a rag to wipe it off?
Thanks for the self-referencing links. Now fuck off with this retarded beta shit!
That's really good, you're making great progress. keep at it old boy!
To intercept the German (and Japanese) communications, our spies listened to everything they could — and recorded whatever they deemed useful.
Today's snowdens would've been outraged...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Surley restoring means putting it back to how it was? But haven't they changed it? The old hut looks brown on the outside and now it's green. The railings look different on another picture too (maybe for health/safety issues?).
... we consider them good code breakers, you know, before all this "imperialism" stuff started? ...
Actually they were literally imperial code breakers serving the British Empire.
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 swear Dice are owned by the corporate droids at Apple and the Rockstar consortium who are attempting to kill off the Gnu/Linux Rebels alongside the Win32 *I refuse to use Metro' rebels and Android Raiders! When Cmdr Taco & Linus Torvalds along with RMS dies I say this ' This house of Github & Bletchly will become a shrine for Geeks, WinNuts and Droids as they gather around in sorrow of their fallen leaders and proclaim Have you Heard RMS is dead, The people's Hacker is Dead!'...
wow,
dude,
think of your blood pressure!
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/