On a beautiful Friday, July 16, the EIL students along with Profs. Berry and Parsons and Zosia Rutkowska 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 Enigma, Bombe, Tunny, Harwell Dekatron, and Colossus machines. 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 guides, John and Peter, and the other volunteers at the NMC were excellent. The students utilized part of their lunch break to burn off some energy on the jungle gym equipment near the Bletchley Park Mansion.
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