Colossus & The Witch
Although it might sound like the title for a good book, and it probably would be, this was actually a trip to Bletchley Park by the 6th form Computing students. We went to put Computing in its correct historical context by seeing, and using, some of the world’s oldest computers.
Bletchley Park is well known for its role as the Cipher breaking centre for the British Secret Service during World War 2. It is maybe less well known for its modern role as the National Museum of Computing. The museum started from a desire by its founder to ensure that the British heritage in Computing was not forgotten and so that people could see, and use, computers from all times.
Our tour took us on a journey through time starting from 1940 at the height of the Second World War. We saw the tools that were used to crack the German Enigma cipher – the Tunny and the Heath Robinson. But the German high command used a more difficult cipher called the Lorenz cipher which took some of the best minds weeks or even months to crack. However, due to a mistake by a German operator the mathematicians at Bletchley knew how to crack the cipher but the process was just very slow. A telecoms engineer called Tommy Flowers realised that he could make a machine that would be able to perform these algorithms quickly and accurately. This machine was the first programmable computer – known as Colossus. At Bletchley Park they have reconstructed the second generation of Colossus and have it working.
Here we all are standing in front of the rebuilt Colossus Mk II computer at Bletchley Park.
The next computer is a true record breaker – it’s in the Guinness Book of Records – and is the oldest working original computer (remember that Colossus is a reconstruction). The WITCH (originally the Harwell Dekatron and now called the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell). Sam King in Year 12 got to take the controls and make the WITCH perform some calculations.
The WITCH – doesn’t she look happy!
Next we moved into a room full of computers from the 60s and 70s where the ubiquitous beige box started to dominate. But these computers are monsters in scale if not in computing power. In keeping with their ethos all the computers work and some had been switched on for us to enjoy. We got to prepare some paper tape with our names on, ably helped by the newly trained chief operator Jemima Barnett, and to see how storage has developed over the years.
Jemima standing with some of the original hard disks – this one could store a massive 4MB per side (you’d get a single photo on this disk!).
In the final stage off our tour we saw computers from the 80s and early 90s. Mr Brant felt in his element as these were the computers he cut his teeth on – he went misty eyed over the Commodore PET, the ZX81 and the Oric 1. Everyone else got excited because for once they could play games. Then we got to go right back to basics (or maybe that should be BASIC) and write some code on the old BBC Micro.
Alex Jones programming a BBC micro from the 1980s. (The camera on the desk beside him probably has more computing power than the computer he’s using!)
The museum has asked us to pass on a plea to anyone who might have some old computer equipment lying around. They’re constantly searching for bits and pieces to keep their collection working and growing. If you have anything, please consider donating it. You can find the museum at http://www.tnmoc.org
Overall this was a great day out and the day met its goal of putting computers in a historical context and teaching us all how lucky we re to be alive when we can carry more computing power in our pockets than was available in the whole world only 70 years ago!
A Level Computing: Trip to Bletchley Park, Wednesday 6th February 2013
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