Bletchley Park Finds a Saviour In Google

hypnosec noted that Google has stepped up to try to help fundraising for Bletchley Park. From TFA: "The point is that all of us have heroes. At Google our heroes are Alan Turing and the people who worked on breaking the codes at Bletchley Park. It was probably the most inspiring and uplifting achievement in scientific technology over the last hundred years. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that without Alan Turing, Google as we know it wouldn't exist."

Huh? I thought they were so last 5 miuntes?

[kaizendojo]

Would that be the internet search behemoth, whose best days are behind it? http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/08/08/1415203/Are-Googles-Best-Days-Behind-It [slashdot.org]

Honestly...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There are legitimate questions to be asked about how many resources we should spend commemorating/preserving the past, vs. letting the past be past and spending forward; but to the degree that comemmoration/celebration/recognition of the past is a worthwhile enterprise, Bletchley park has always seemed mysteriously neglected.

The work done there was extraordinarily vital in terms of signals intelligence and cryptography, and not having that done would have hampered the Allied war effort significantly. The fact that that work also included some groundbreaking CS and early computing machine work is just icing on the cake. There are other WWII sites with many more casualties; but the only other WWII R&D developments that can even fall in the same order of magnitude are the Manhattan Project, Penicillin mass-production, and possibly Radar(The cavity magnetron: defeated Hitler and produces delicious popcorn in minutes!).

Letting the past keep to itself is a self-consistent position, albeit not one I endorse; but any sort of historical preservation of WWII stuff that doesn't have Bletchley park well up there seems downright ill-formed...