Tuesday, June 18th - National Museum of Computing

Today we visited the National Museum of Computing located in Bletchley Park, which has the worlds largest collection of working historical computers. 

We got to see many historical computers including:

• Lorenz SZ42 (used by German high command during WWII).
• The original Tunny machine (which was a recreation of the then unseen Lorenz SZ42).
• The Heath Robinson (one of the early attempts at automated code-breaking).
• A reconstruction of the Turing-Welchman Bombe (which was used during WWII to break Enigma-enciphered messages).
• Colossus (the worlds first electronic computer created to decipher Lorenz encrypted messages).
• First Generation Computers like the Harwell Dekatron Computer (aka WITCH, the worlds oldest working digital computer) and the original HEC prototype. 

It was fascinating to hear about how human error tipped the allies off to decoding messages. In 1941 a German officer sent a 4,000 character message but it didn’t go through properly. Instead of entering a new key, the officer reused the same key to resend his message. This was a critical mistake as changing the key was what kept the system secure.

I also found it interesting when our guide described how our access and attitudes towards computers have changed over time. We’ve gone from there being one computer in the world, to one per country, to one per town, to one per street, to one in every house, to carrying them around in our pockets. Looking at how physically massive computers used to be this idea would have been inconceivable! As he said, when you “live in a box where that’s all that’s possible” you’ll never see the true possibilities of the future.

Visit the National Museum of Computing website here