No Museum Status For UK Home of Enigma Machine 101
hardsix writes "Despite the numerous films, books and plays, celebrating the brilliant achievements of the code-breakers at Bletchley Park, the UK government is still dragging its feet over providing proper support for the site. There has just been a debate in the House of Lords over whether the site should be given similar status to the UK's main WWII museum — the Imperial War Museum. But the government has brushed off the request, claiming that the site has received enough funding recently.
However, as was shown by a visit to the site by UK actor, and Twitter-lover Stephen Fry, although devices such as Enigma have been restored many of the huts where the code-breaking work went on are in a bad state and more investment is needed."
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the fact it and the work that was done at the site were the precursor to a whole new field - Computer science and the fact that arguably the most important device in existence today, the computer, were effectively born there is why it should be saved.
It's not just any old computer and it's not just any old site, it's where computer science and the sub-field of artificial intelligence became a reality.
It seems important to save the first "anything" as a celebration of our achievements. It also has a lot of inspirational value for kids when they can see how some of the things that are taken for granted today came about - it's hard to imagine how someone could invent the computer if you look at something as complex as those we use today, but if kids are shown early models they can learn more easily how the things come about.
Enigma preserved (Score:5, Interesting)
This article made me wonder what had happened to the stolen one... it was returned, after all.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tvs-paxman-sent-stolen-enigma-machine-634351.html [independent.co.uk]
Well - first we have doubt about Tesla's surviving to become a museum, and now this. However it goes for BP - and I do hope that it can be saved as a museum, here's a little reminder of a site that many /.ers know about - http://www.xat.nl/enigma-e/index.htm [www.xat.nl]
The spirit of the machine will continue to thrive, it seems. I hope the same is true of BP, where Turing & company changed things for so many.
Museums have a place, in history (Score:3, Interesting)
Museums have a place, in history, i.e. contemporary history in that they preserve that past.
However, I understand that not all places that housed an ingenious activitity or scientific discovery must stand untouched. At least that is how I read the government's remarks.
The issue must be however, does one need to save the building to save he Enigma machine? I don't think so.
The Enigma machine may very well have a special place at a WWII museum or a technological museum.
However nice the environments are at Bletchely Park, they most probably were not crucial to the Enigma machine. Well, think of Bletchely Park without the Enigma and think of the Enigma without Bletchely Park.
I believe the Enigma apparatus has a greater place in Britsh history than the house itself. In fact, Alan Turing had a more important place than that house.
Well, of course one could save the house too, if one can afford it. And, that is always the real issue. Museums do have an important and functional place, in contemporary history.
Re:Museums have a place, in history (Score:3, Interesting)
The buildings of Bletchley Park act as a reminder of so much. The story of the codebreaking is not just that of a handful of geniuses. It is the story of the 9000 people there at its height. It is the story of the women who set up the computers, working extraordinary hours without any official knowledge of what they were achieving. It is the story of the hundreds of despatch riders who brought in at night the signals collected at the distant listening posts staffed by by small isolated groups.
It is also the story of how the 10,000 plus people who worked there at some point of the war, and the many local people who hosted them and served them in shops, pubs etc, kept the secret. There was a strong shared purpose to do what it took to win the war, even if they did not always understood how their part fitted in to the whole.
Re:It comes as no suprise. (Score:3, Interesting)
We [taxpayersalliance.com] have [order-order.com] some [private-eye.co.uk].
Of course they're not quite Michael Moore in that they're more concerned with exposing wrongdoing than endless self-promotion.
Many people have been ousted this year thanks to Guido and the Torygraph, on both sides of the House. The Private Eye and Ian Hislop in particular in his spot on Have I Got News For You are good at keeping the great and *cough* good *cough* uncomfortable. And the mainstream press aren't too bad either, with the Grauniad and Torygraph keeping Governments of right and left respectively on their toes most of the time, with the Independent taking the occasional pot-shot at anyone. The Times is a Murdochian waste of space though.
It's a fine museum--visit if you're in the area! (Score:4, Interesting)
I visited the Bletchley Park museum last time I was in Milton Keynes on business. As you'll see from the link in the article, it's a fascinating site and an interesting collection, complete with reconstructions of the Bombe and Collossus. The place seems in pretty good shape and pretty well supported; lots of plaques announcing funding from big corporates (IBM, I seem to remember)—better funded, certainly, than a lot of museums.
It recently got a grant from English Heritage, the UK government agency responsible for supporting museums and sites of historical interest. This story is about it not getting a direct grant from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (but that's not how most of our museums are funded anyway).
Re:Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Bletchley Park is not particularly neglected— they're canny fundraisers and this is a good way of drumming up some publicity.
As a Brit and a CS PhD student, you should definitely visit if you're passing near Milton Keynes. There is a museum there; I've been and it's a really great one. The article title is just plain misleading—what actually happened is that they weren't given the same national status as the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum.
More cash for them would of course be nice, but the evidence if you visit says they're not doing badly without it.
Re:It comes as no suprise. (Score:2, Interesting)
And they also need to pay for:
6) Over half a million pounds for the National Codes Centre at Bletchley Park
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/docview.rhtm/571874 [bletchleypark.org.uk]
An announcement from March 2009. The funding came via a government body called English Heritage [wikipedia.org] whose remit is to fund historical monuments and heritage centres.
The story here is that the government refused to provide funding on the basis that they were already providing funding.
Re:RTFS (Score:5, Interesting)
The important thing to preserve is the intellectual achievement. The work of the ULTRA cryptanalysts has finally got the recognition it deserves after decades of secrecy, and it's the machines they built and the papers they wrote that I'd primarily want to see preserved. They form the very foundation of computer science - quite apart from possibly having won the war. These all need a museum dedicated to their preservation and to the job of educating visitors on the importance of all this mathematical stuff - and for that matter, on how the government ended up treating the genius behind it all, the man they owed so much.
The site itself, and the buildings? While I'd like to see them maintained too, they're in competition for funding with a quite ridiculous number of other important historical sites which are also falling into disrepair - and if it comes down to a choice of one or the other, I'd sooner preserve some fascinating example of mediaeval architecture where the building itself is of historical interest.
Re:Investment? (Score:4, Interesting)
bring a war to an end without hurting *anyone*
I think many dead Germans would beg to differ. Bletchley Park didn't decrypt messages so they could catch unicorns in giant butterfly nets, they did it so that they could locate and sink German convoys, and outmaneuver and crush German forces.
Also, this:
They crunched numbers, invented great mathematics and the entire field of Computer Science
is not exactly true. The mathematics was done in Poland, and Bombes weren't computers at all. Bombes were essentially high-speed, motorized Enigmas with a circuit that tested the output against a cribbed value. The Colossus machines at Bletchley Park were computers, but weren't Turing-complete and were roughly contemporary with both Zuse' work in Germany (the Z3 was the first programmable electronic computer) and ENIAC (the first Turing-complete computer) development in the US.
As for computer science more generally, Turing was crucial to its development, but much of his key work was done before the war, not at Bletchley Park. Meanwhile, many other key ideas came from elsewhere, both before and during the war, including the work of Claude Shannon and John von Neumann.
The work at Bletchley Park was hugely important to ending the war, and a lot of very clever people worked very hard to break Enigma messages on an industrial scale, but most of what they did had no non-war value.
I think it's worth preserving, but let's not overstate the case.