A secret and still relatively unknown historic spot

We were lucky enough to hear from Stefan about Bletchley Park, the base for up to 9,000 codebreakers during World War 2. The centre, which remained secret for over 30 years, is credited with shortening the war by around two years.

Churchill visited the centre during the war and called the codebreakers "his geese that laid the golden eggs but never cackled". There is a slate statue of Alan Turring, who was the brains behind the Bombe, which cracked the codes produced by the Germans' Enigma machines. There is a working replica of the Bombe.






But the highlight of the day for Ann was the working replica of Collosus, "the world's first semi-programmable computer", using over 2,500 valves. Believe it or not, 40 of the valves are from the original Colossus machines. And apparently it works as fast as a laptop with a Pentium 2 processor. It was rather warm in the room, as all those valves use 7KW of power.

Awesome place! David, Dean, Carly, you would all find it fascinating given your computer/maths interests. Wish you could have been there with us!

More info at www.codesandciphers.org.uk

;-) Ann-a-Gram