February 5th 1944

[NickFitz]

Yes they are!

"Our records show that the numbers of Bletchley Park visitors coming to Block H to see the Colossus Rebuild are declining as a direct result of Bletchley Park Trust actions. Today most Bletchley Park Trust visitors miss the key experience of seeing the Colossus Rebuild and the Tunny machine in action and thereby miss out on key working exhibits representing the outstanding pinnacle of the World War II code-breaking story.

Negotiations with the Bletchley Park Trust to achieve a fair and equitable financial arrangement to give all Bletchley Park fee-paying visitors access to Colossus and Tunny have proved exceedingly difficult. The Bletchley Park Trust's current action to erect gates and barriers between its own display area and Block H will almost certainly prove divisive. "

You said "dissuade", which makes it sound like representatives of the BPT are going up to visitors saying "TNMoC? Oh no, you don't want to go there, very unpleasant, run a mile in the opposite direction is my advice." I think it's a bit stupid to muck about putting a fence between the two places, but they are in fact two separate institutions on the same site. When I visited a couple of years ago, it was made very clear at the ticket place that I had the choice of paying an additional fee for admission to TNMoC, either there or at TNMoC itself, but that it wasn't included in the admission price for BPT's stuff.

[MicrosoftBob]

No they're not, they've just changed the tours so they no longer include TNMoC by default. TNMoC has always been a separate entity.

Yes they are!

"Our records show that the numbers of Bletchley Park visitors coming to Block H to see the Colossus Rebuild are declining as a direct result of Bletchley Park Trust actions. Today most Bletchley Park Trust visitors miss the key experience of seeing the Colossus Rebuild and the Tunny machine in action and thereby miss out on key working exhibits representing the outstanding pinnacle of the World War II code-breaking story.

Negotiations with the Bletchley Park Trust to achieve a fair and equitable financial arrangement to give all Bletchley Park fee-paying visitors access to Colossus and Tunny have proved exceedingly difficult. The Bletchley Park Trust's current action to erect gates and barriers between its own display area and Block H will almost certainly prove divisive. "

[NickFitz]

It's a shame Bletchley Park are trying to disuade people from visiting the museum these days (:

No they're not, they've just changed the tours so they no longer include TNMoC by default. TNMoC has always been a separate entity.

[MicrosoftBob]

The museum is good value. They have a fantastic collection of old boxes, all sorts from home computers to 80s UNIX and VAX machines as well as the really old stuff and ICL mainframe.

It's also housed in the building where my dad used to work. We used to park next to those dilapidated huts waiting for him to come out, completely ignorant of their history. It was from the "sports and social club" there that he hired the first computer I ever encountered, and where the BT training manual on how to build your own microcomputer based on a 6502 came from. So in quite a profound way, Bletchley Park is responsible for me being a computer geek.

It's a shame Bletchley Park are trying to disuade people from visiting the museum these days (:

[NickFitz]

"Colossus was kept a secret for 30 years because of the sensitive work it did during World War Two to crack German codes" - actually, it was kept secret for so long after the war because there were countries, including some that were supposedly our allies, still using the codes (or similar ones) that the work at Bletchley had made crackable. GCHQ weren't going to let them know that we'd broken those codes years before

+1 for the museum - well worth a visit.

[doodab]

The museum is good value. They have a fantastic collection of old boxes, all sorts from home computers to 80s UNIX and VAX machines as well as the really old stuff and ICL mainframe.

It's also housed in the building where my dad used to work. We used to park next to those dilapidated huts waiting for him to come out, completely ignorant of their history. It was from the "sports and social club" there that he hired the first computer I ever encountered, and where the BT training manual on how to build your own microcomputer based on a 6502 came from. So in quite a profound way, Bletchley Park is responsible for me being a computer geek.

[administrator]

Pretty mental stuff:

The existence of Colossus was kept top secret for 30 years because of the sophistication and sensitivity around the encryption it had helped to break. Many of those who worked on it went on to build other computers and technology.

Occupying the size of a living room, Colossus weighed five tonnes, used 8kW of power and incorporated 2,500 valves and 10,000 resistors connected by 7km of wiring.

[zeitghost]

First electronic computer honoured - BT

Designed by Tommy Flowers, a much underappreciated chap, et al.