Thursday, July 24, 2008

Save Bletchley Park

As almost any fule should kno, Bletchly Park is the place where a team of scientists and others, led by Alan Turing, cracked the German Enigma codes, a major contribution to the Allied war effort and the eventual defeat of Nazism. The secret work remained little known for some time after the war, and the site was only made into a museum in the 1990s. The work done at Bletchly is a crucial part of the history of the world, especially of the Second World War, and the history of computers. The museum is also in a rather shabby state, as computer scientist Sue Black recently discovered on visiting. She's got a group of computer scientists to help her make a noise, and hopefully see the site better looked after.

Some links:

Sue Black's page.

Article about the recent noise in The Times (Black and 96 other experts, mostly computer scientists, sent an open letter to The Times). And another on the BBC.

The Bletchley Park museum website.

There's also a (now expired) petition to save Bletchley, predating Sue Black's visit and campaign.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks very much for the post :-)

Please note that the petition is open until May 2009 so please do sign and encourage others to do the same.

Many thanks

Sue Black