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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.
Where is the honououour in that?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
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.
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/