

Bletchley Park wins £4.6m grant - fakelvis
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-15171726

======
simonw
That's fantastic news.

I was at Bletchley Park last weekend for Over The Air, a mobile development
conference/hack day. It's a truly extraordinary place - if you haven't been
yet, you have a real treat in store.

They've already done a fantastic job bringing the place to life, and the
working reconstructions of both Colossus (the first electronic programmable
computer) and Alan Turing's Bombe (the mechanical device that cracked Enigma)
are both completely spellbinding. They also do a really good tour.

~~~
ra
It is fantastic news. It's only recently that the UK government apologized for
Turing's post-war mistreatment, which tragically led to his suicide at the age
of 42.

I only recently learned of Turings seminal work on mathematical biology; he
demonstrated that much of the complexity found in nature is the result of
simple algorithms. His concepts we learn about today in fields such as
fractals and Chaos theory.

It's possible that Alan Turing might have one become one the all time great
scientist had he survived to live out his career.

Bletchley Park is very high on my to do list next time I'm in the UK - along
with IWM Duxford [1].

[1] <http://duxford.iwm.org.uk/>

~~~
justincormack
They did officially apologise recently. Some more grants would not go amiss
though.

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fakelvis
I just read that the Bletchley Park Trust needs to raise a further £1.7m on
their own in order to 'unlock' the £4.6m grant from the Heritage Lottery
Fund.[1]

Time to get that bank card out of my wallet.

[1]
[http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/contact/donation/sup...](http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/contact/donation/support.rhtm)

------
0x12
JGC will be pleased as punch with this:

[http://blog.jgc.org/2010/01/1000-for-bletchley-park-
thanks-t...](http://blog.jgc.org/2010/01/1000-for-bletchley-park-thanks-to-
geek.html)

Great to see that Bletchley Park will live on, it's one of very few historical
sites that have meaning to those that are interested in our digital
beginnings.

~~~
jgrahamc
Yes, I am pleased as punch. Especially since when the Alan Turing petition was
successful I bent the ear of the then Prime Minister about funding Bletchley
Park. Not long after a small amount of lottery funding was announced that
enabled them to make the bid for this larger amount. I don't know whether that
was really because of me, but it doesn't matter. This news is great.

Here's the email I sent to Downing St. summarizing the situation on September
11, 2009:

    
    
      Kirsty,
    
      As you can imagine I have an Inbox filled with 
      media requests and congratulatory notes from 
      around the world.  A common theme in these
      mails is a desire to see a memorial of some 
      kind to Alan Turing.
    
      Three suggestions (in order of popularity):
    
      1. Find some way to fund Bletchley Park and the
      National Museum of Computing.
      2. Use the Fourth Plinth for a Turing statue
      3. Name the marathon at the 2012 Olympics after
      Turing (he was a very good marathon runner and 
      it's his centenary in 2012).
    
      All of these are good suggestions.  If the government 
      did #1 you would have my full backing.
    
      John.
    

It is bloody marvellous that they have got the money to improve the site. I
triply love Bletchley Park because of: (a) The codebreakers part (b) The
National Museum of Computing and (c) it is now the home of the National Radio
Centre (for all the UK hams out there) and I studied to be a radio amateur
there with MKARS.

~~~
arethuza
I have to say, I _really_ like the idea of using the Fourth Plinth for a
statue of Turing - especially if the statue could somehow include some
representation of his mathematical works.

~~~
tommorris
No, what it needs is at the base of the plinth a small screen and keyboard
where you get connected to either a random anonymous person on the Internet or
an AI, and you have to work out which one you are speaking to.

------
pmr_
I have to admit that the first time I got really aware of Bletchley Park was
while I was reading Cryptonomicon from Stephenson and started looking into its
actual history. One of the few monuments in reality the digital age actually
has. Nice to see it preserved.

------
jgrahamc
This is really great news for all that love Bletchley Park and for all that
have yet to see it.

~~~
0x12
Hehe, I knew you'd comment here :)

Good stuff.

------
pbhjpbhj
How much of it is going to be wasted like this:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12575029>

Why use tax payers money to buy prints of Turings papers when the original
papers weren't lost and the content of the prints was known? Makes no sense to
me. Just so you can stick some pieces of paper in a glass case somewhere?

~~~
ig1
They were papers owned by Turing with his handwritten notes on them.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
As I understand it they were mainly offprints (reprints of articles that were
bound in the original print run) sent to Prof Newman when Turing was
published. It's possible Turing owned them but not in any significant way.
Newman kept the papers. Then he tried to flog them for £½ million at
Christies, couldn't, but somehow he or his supporters managed to convince the
NHMF to give £200,000 GBP (along with £30k (?) or so funds raised elsewhere)
for the papers.

It appears from all reports I've seen that there is literally nothing of
significance that would be lost with the export of these papers. None of the
Press, which all seems to be based on the writing of Gareth Halfacre, detailed
what was special about the papers:

"The set includes articles which have been annotated by Newman, along with Max
Newman's name inscribed in pencil in Turing's hand. Accompanying the set of
offprints is the Newman household visitors’ book with several signatures of
Turing, that of Turing’s mother and, of special significance to Bletchley
Park, signatures of other wartime codebreaking giants." [from
[http://www.nhmf.org.uk/LatestNews/Pages/EleventhHourRescueof...](http://www.nhmf.org.uk/LatestNews/Pages/EleventhHourRescueofTuringCollection.aspx)]

It seems the public were sold a lie. People thought the papers were Turings
original notes and such when in fact he just wrote his friends name on the
top.

The NHMF should now just take hi-res scans of the documents and sell them for
whatever they can get. Nothing of significance will be lost you can look up
the papers on Google Scholar.

Edit: as an associated example, you can get
<http://plms.oxfordjournals.org/content/s2-42/1/230.extract> for free but it
costs you $22k for the first edition print
([http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?from=sea...](http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?from=searchresults&intObjectID=4443664&sid=69da1a2a-1a27-430d-8164-e60ed80422c8)).
IMO the free online version is more valuable.

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DanBC
The history is important, and I'm really pleased they got some money. They
still need a bit more. And really, in the scheme of things, a couple of
million is not much for such an important site. I am worried about them being
able to get it, especially at the moment.

It's a bit depressing that programming and that kind of thinking is neglected
in the curriculum.

------
tobylane
I went recently, it really needs the money. It needs it so bad I wouldn't
bother going until they've spent this money. Donate in the meantime.

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knotty66
Terrific news - a shame Tony Sale was not here to see it.

