A couple of days ago, a group of us from the LFMU group pottered out of London to visit Bletchley Park for the day, which was loads of fun. I'd been wanting to go there for a couple of years, after seeing Rooney's photos, and hearing him talk about how great the computer museum was. Not that I am really all that obsessive about computers, vintage or otherwise, but it seemed like the sort of quirky independent museum that would just tickle my fancy. Saturday's trip proved that to a much greater extent, as I discovered just how much there really is to see at Bletchley Park. Answer: lots and lots and lots.
Bletchley Park is mostly famous for being the home of code-breaking during the second world war, and there is of course a museum dedicated to that subject; full of strange machines with weird dials and alphabet cogs, and lots of information about what all the machines do, which was quite a lot to take in. Then, of course, there's the National Museum of Computing, which houses all kinds of vintage computers and adding machines, dating all the way back to Victorian "computing scales" made of paper and card, and probably even further back than that. Both of these museums have enough information and objects to look at to take a decent chunk out of your afternoon. What I didn't realise was just how much else there is to see at Bletchley Park. You really get a lot of value out of your £10 entry ticket (which is valid for the whole year so you can go back).
Bletchley Park is largely run by volunteers who have fortunately embraced social media in all its forms, having multiple accounts on Flickr, Twitter etc. When they found out we were planning to visit, we were very generously offered a personal tour of the place, and they gave us quite a lot of extra attention. We were able to see a preview of the bombe register in full working order as a special favour to our group, because the volunteer who runs it doesn't usually come in on Saturdays, so that was pretty cool — especially as it doesn't officially open until tomorrow. Having an official guide with us also meant that sometimes we were allowed to sneak behind the barriers and cordons, and take photos of things that the general public don't usually get to see at a casual glance. The volunteers seemed extremely knowledgeable and were always willing to answer questions and share their enthusiasm, and seemed particularly pleased to open cabinets and turn switches for us, which was also nice.
The downside to this enthusiasm was that our guide, @panavision was so keen to ensure that we managed to see every single museum contained therein that we were fairly whizzed around the place at great speed, which meant that we didn't always have as much time as I would have liked to browse things, and some of us were a bit exhausted at the end of it! Of course, that's a minor complaint, as I really did appreciate having all the bits shown to me, not to mention all the extra attention we got.
On our guided tour, we were whipped through the two museums mentioned above, and also the ones listed below:
In fact, even though my battery ran out before I'd finished going around all the museums, I still had a great day's shooting and took loads of pictures. Better than just taking them all, I was pleased to discover that I actually liked a large chunk of them (which doesn't happen as often as I'd like). Now I just have the task of choosing which ones to put online. I've started uploading some of them, which you can see in the set here, and I'll be adding more to the set over the next week or so. You should also be able to see everyone else's photos here, as long as they've tagged them properly.
After looking at so many rooms stuffed full of so much information, we started to feel pretty stuffed full of information ourselves, and decided to pop into the cafe for a reviving cuppa. Unfortunately, everything is supposed to shut at 4:00pm and the cafe seemed to be the first place to close (as in so many places, why do they do this? It's so nice having a half hour tea break after a museum has thrown you out at closing time!) There aren't any places to eat or drink in the immediate vicinity of the estate, but thanks to waving their hands around a lot, the iPhone geeks were able to get online and look up some pubs.
We wandered around a few corners to the nearest hostelry that had had a decent review on Beer In The Evening, The Eight Belles. Unfortunately, they weren't doing food until 6:00pm, but thanks again to the wonder of iPhones, we were able to find another pub a little further afield. As it happens, The Swan was a nicer pub, anyway; shabbily comfortable with a friendlier atmosphere. Food portions were generous, prices reasonable, and the fish part of my fish-and-chips was very fresh and the batter tasted homemade. Om nom nom!
After dinner, we went back to Bletchley Park, to watch Matthew Applegate, aka Pixelh8, performing his new piece Obsolete? This is a series of tunes (which Applegate endearingly called "songs" even though they have no vocals and no one sings them) made entirely from noise samples taken from the computers in the National Museum of Computing, and was quite entertaining. (I thought timscience would particularly have enjoyed it.)
The entire performance of the piece was quite short, only 25 minutes, but afterwards Applegate went through the pieces again, explaining where the samples had come from, and in some cases the entertaining methods of recording them (like the day he wrapped the machine and himself entirely in bubble-wrap in order to muffle all the external noise). I preferred the second part of the show, as he was far more animated in explaining how he'd come up with the pieces than when he was crouching behind a laptop checking the program in the first bit, so it was more interesting. There's a bit of it on video here, which Martin just sent me the link to. Unfortunately, the video's not working on this computer, but he says I'm onscreen, "presuming you're the ball of hair next to Paul" so see if you can find me.
After the performance, there was a tour around the computer museum to demonstrate the machines that had been used in making the music, but a few of us decided to catch the train, as the next train was an hour after that, and by then we were just too tired to hang around that long. Some of the others stayed behind for the tour, though.
All in all, a really fun, interesting day with lots to see and lots to appeal to different people all in one place. Technology fans will love the code-breaking machines and computery stuff; design fans will love the printed ephemera; history buffs will love learning about the people who worked there; movie fans will love the cinema stuff; photographers will love the fact that nothing has restrictions; and Bletchley Park will love you for showing an interest in such an important part of British Heritage.
on Mar 23rd, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Just hope that Martin didn't mistake you for the balding ball of hair on the other side of Paul. If he did he deserves a punch in the neck :)
The tour later was more a wander around the museum introduced by a talk about Colussus by Eric Sale. It was pretty good but if you ever get a chance to hear Eric talk about the machine go for it – his rolled Rs and love of the rebuild make him an excellent speaker.
on Mar 24th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
[...] but I wanted to find someone a little closer to home. Then it occurred to me that, since I'd be visiting Bletchley Park, the female code-breakers of Station X might be the thing to focus on. Only, we were whizzed [...]
on Mar 24th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Mildly annoyed you'd dare to enter my stomping-ground and dare to do something quite cool while there. Still, another reminder that I need to do more things.
on Mar 25th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Great post, Mondo. And here I was thinking all they had there was a dusty old code machine.
on Mar 26th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
You both should go! It's ace. As I said before, MJ, I think you'd like it.
on Jun 10th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
[...] While the lads seemed to have the most fun nostalgically geeking out over the vintage machines in the NMOC, I remained impressed with the extensive collections of gorgeously-designed printed ephemera, and the sheer amount of both objects and information about them. Even though I've now been there twice, and spent the entire afternoon wandering around all of the various museums, I still feel like I've barely scraped the surface of information to be discovered, and will no doubt be back again before the year ends (my ticket is valid for another nine months, after all). There's a pile of 1940s books in the Home Front & Toy Museum that I'd love to have a proper look through, not to mention about a thick paperback's worth of reading on codebreaking that I've pretty much ignored in favour of other things on both visits. (My previous report is here.) [...]