

Restoring Bletchley Park: birthplace of modern computing - canistr
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/restoring-bletchley-park-birthplace-of.html

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iuguy
I've been to Bletchley Park about 3 times now. It is staggeringly amazing what
went on there, when you think of the effort those people went through and
their contribution to the war. It must have been incredibly painful to let
people die rather than run the risk of the Germans knowing that the codes were
broken.

If you ever come to the UK from abroad, you can get a train from Euston
Station (zone 1 on the underground) to Milton Keynes and from there head to
Bletchley Park. It's well worth a day trip for the serious geek/hacker type.

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defeated
I just did this about a month ago, and it couldn't be easier to get from
London to Bletchley Park, it's literally right up the road from the Milton
Keynes train station, maybe a two minute walk.

Getting to Down House (Darwin's House) from London, on the other hand, while
totally worthwhile... what a hassle!

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timthorn
I think you mean the Bletchley rail station - MK Central is some miles away.

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defeated
Yep, sorry about that, it was the MK line, stopped at Bletchley :).

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stcredzero
They deserve credit along with a number of other sites. (The Manhattan Project
is one.)

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chadgeidel
I'm not trying to be snarky, but I did not know the Manhattan Project used
(non-human) computers in any significant way. None of the
documentaries/specials I've seen have mentioned any use.

Would you care to enlighten me?

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stcredzero
They used IBM machines with punch cards to do (what were then) large numbers
of automated computations.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM#1939-1945:_World...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM#1939-1945:_World_War_II)

Feynman often used to rib Danny Hillis about Computer Science being a fluff
field, since he'd already done all that stuff using primitive machines back in
the 40's.

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chadgeidel
Thanks for that.

