Bletchley Park: The National Museum of Computing

Thursday July 23

Our last class visit was to Bletchley Park to visit The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC). We were off to a bit of a rough start because our bus driver was running a little late but we made it and it was a fun and worthwhile visit. After we went through TNMOC we took a tour of the grounds. Both tours covered a great deal about the history of Bletchley Park and the role the people who worked there played in breaking the German Enigma codes during World War II.

What still strikes me as so amazing about this place is the fact that The National Museum of Computing is home to the oldest original digital computer, the Harwell Dekatron. This computer is also known as WITCH because it became known as the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computation from Harwell and was a key tool in computer education until the early 1970s. This computer dates back to the 1950s and the employees at TNMOC are responsible for restoring it to its original glory. It is one thing to be told how large computers used to be and quite another to see it up close and personal. Located next to the WITCH there is also a LEGO model of the computer. You can see a photograph of both the computer and the model below.

Our tour guide as TNMOC was great at not only showing us these items and talking about the history and development of computing but putting it all into context. Anytime he would show us something new he would discuss the prices of the items when they were first on the market and how much money that would mean now. He also had a way of really getting us to think about storage and retrieval. The amount of memory that can be stored on our phones, tablets and computers would have needed to be put on devices that could fill up entire rooms. The way technology has changed so has the understanding of information. Since our computers are now mobile devices we often expect that information should be just as mobile and easily accessible.

It was fun to be in a place where so much information was collected and used to aid in the efforts of World War II. That history is kept alive and well by The Museum of National Computing and the tours offered at Bletchley Park. It was a great end to our tours during our time in the UK and it was a wonderful way to think about information and how technology shapes the way we think about information storage, retrieval and dissemination.