Bletchley Park

On a beautiful Friday, June 21, the EIL students along with Profs. Berry and Parsons and Kimberley Aparisio from IES visited Bletchley Park (north of London). Bletchley Park is where Alan Turing and his colleagues in Hut 8 broke the (naval) Enigma code during World War II. The students witnessed demonstrations of working Bombe, Tunny, Harwell Dekatron, and Colossus machines and were given the opportunity to operate an actual Enigma machine. The Colossus was the world's first electric digital computer that was programmable. The Colossus computers were developed to help in the cryptanalysis of the Hitler's Lorenz cipher.  Nicknamed WITCH for Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell, the Harwell Dekatron at the National Museum of Computing (NMC) is considered the oldest electronic computer that is still operational. Our guide (Sheridan) ant the other volunteers at the NMC were excellent.  The students utilized part of their lunch break on the jungle gym equipment and playing outdoor chess (with human chess pieces).