BT funds UK Crypto Heritage Park

evilandi writes "Bletchley Park, "home of the WW2 codebreakers and [allegedly!] the world's first electronic programmable computer" (Colossus I), has been saved following this deal with British Telecom. The historic site will be converted into part museum, part conference centre and part education resource- all specifically crypto oriented. WW2 hacker HQ "D-Block" (the precursor to GCHQ) will be restored along with the lovely grounds and manor house. "

Comments

Why keep it a secret?

[Sanity]

I'll tell you why - so that the British government could sell the Enigma encryption algorithm to other countries and then spy on them! I reacall hearing somewhere that as recently as 1985, prior to the signing of the Anglo-Irish agreement (an agreement designed to rob the IRA of some of its excuses for causing trouble, but which was a bit of a failure) the British could read all correspondance between the London Irish Embassy and Dublin. How? Because the Irish were using the Enigma code which had been sold to them by the British, and nobody outside British and American intelligence knew that it had been cracked! Apparently the rights to the Enigma code were given to the British as compensation for WW2, what else would you do with a broken encryption code, if not sell it!

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Why no computer was the "first" computer

[evilandi]

Okay, the reason I put the word "allegedly" into my story quote is because I expected there to be some considerable disagreement about which was the "first" computer. Particularly since Germany, France, the UK and the USA all claim this honour (plus a few others I expect).

The problem is: what is a computer? Do you mean a calculator? So does an abacus count? Something that runs a program? So does a weaving loom count? Something electronic that runs a program? So does a washing machine count? Something digital? Something that has a modifyable program? Something that stores its program in the same way as its data?

As you can see, there are many definitions of "computer". Stop bickering!

And to add to that, early computers were often an international effort. Certianly Bletchley Park relied heavily on US involvement towards the end of the war.

That doesn't detract from the fact that Bletchley Park was a major contributor to both cryptography and modern computing.

Anyway, here's a few more British historical computing links for those who like nostaligia. If anyone would like to add some links to sites about other historical computers- of any nation- I'd be most interested.

Colossus I
The LEO - Lyons Electric Office (my dad worked on this)
The WITCH (my dad worked on this, too!)
The Baby

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