Milton Keynes is not far from London, so it should be too surprising that it’s home to three important museums that have connections with communications and technology; Bletchley Park (BP), the Nation Museum of Computing (NMoC) and the Milton Keynes Museum (MKM).
Bletchley Park is the home of the World War II code breakers that cracked Enigma. Thought to be uncrackable by the Germans, the Enigma cipher had a crucial flaw and this enabled some of the best minds in the country to develop a way of reading messages containing vital information. Amongst them were four instantly recognisable names; Gordon Welchman, Tommy Flowers, Dilly Knox and Alan Turing.
The National Museum of Computing houses some of the most important developments in the history of technology. These include: the Bombe – used to decipher Enigma coded messages; Colossus – the world’s first electronic computer and used to decipher Lorenz encrypted messages during WWII; the Witche – the world’s oldest working digital computer; and many more that span the forties right through to the eighties and beyond.
Finally, the Milton Keynes Museum house a wide range of artefacts to marvel at, but amongst them is the Communications collection. Featuring switchboards, exchanges and telephones through the ages, it concludes our trio of delights for our Bletchley Park trip.
Over the weekend of the 14th & 15th September, some of us will be decamping to Milton Keynes to visit these museums. If you’d like to join us, further information and registration details can be found in our calendar.