back to article UK's National Museum of Computing celebrates 10 glorious years

The National Museum of Computing (TNMoC), which yesterday celebrated its tenth anniversary as an independent organisation, will this coming weekend formally inaugurate a new membership club for enthusiasts of Britain’s computing heritage, and supporters of the museum. The decade has not been without its growing pains, among …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I thiught it had been open longer than 24 nonths.

  2. GlenP Silver badge

    Having visited earlier in the year, and been slightly disappointed by TNMoC, I'm pleased they seem to be addressing things. Much of it still seemed to be an excuse for boys to play with their toys, with little interaction with the paying public (apart from the timed talks on the decryption side).

    Glen

  3. eJ2095

    Went about 4 years ago

    Had a fun day there chatting to the guys.

    Got taken behind the scenes as well to have a nose.

    and have the advantage its only 1 train trip :-0

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Would be nice if we had a future IT industry.

    It seems that ARM is about all we have left.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Mushroom

      Ah yes, ARM.

      That'll be thing the thing that utterly dominates the mobile world, yes? And of course, most of the pundits reckon mobile devices will kill off everything else[1]. Most countries would cut off their left nut for a slice of that.

      [1] It doesn't matter who says this or how often, it's still bollocks.

      1. werdsmith Silver badge

        I have no idea how ARM hasn't yet gone to overseas ownership. Must be just a matter of time.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Visit!

    I found the NMoC just great when I visited two years ago. Full of old kit I fondly remembered from my childhood, and full of enthusiastic folk to talk about it all too. They'd explained to me how a recent coding class of children loved the BBC Micro once they understood you could switch it on and immediately do something with it - no long boot times, no logins, no adverts on home screens etc...

    No two ways about it, the museum is tatty as hell and needs some money spending on it; Bletchley park is also rather woebegone. But I'd rather it this way than some shiny 'digital multimedia experience environment' full of daft sound bites, patronising marketing and subject to the incessant and tiring dumbing down that pretty much every other place of education is suffering from. Not every museum has to look like an Apple Store after all.

    If you're an IT geek, and of course you are - you're here, then definitely visit!

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: Visit!

      No two ways about it, the museum is tatty as hell and needs some money spending on it; Bletchley park is also rather woebegone. But I'd rather it this way than some shiny 'digital multimedia experience environment' full of daft sound bites, patronising marketing and subject to the incessant and tiring dumbing down that pretty much

      Errrm, 2 years ago you say?

      Time for another look.

  6. Bob Wheeler
    Thumb Up

    Colossus

    "The ten Colossi built between 1943 and 1945 and put to work at Bletchley Park were all dismantled and completely destroyed immediately after the conclusion of the conflict"

    I'm sure I read/heard that after the war in 1945, not all of the Colossi where destroyed. but that some of them where moved to places such as RAF Eastcote and used by the American's for breaking of Soviet codes, as the Soviet's used the ex-German egnigma machines.

    1. MrT

      Re: Colossus

      "Two were retained by the peace-time descendant of Bletchley Park, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)... The last Colossus is believed to have stopped running in 1960." B Jack Copeland, page 2 of his introduction to the excellent book Colossus, 2006, which includes chapters by Tutte, Flowers and plenty of others who where involved. There's one reference to post-war reprogramming on p139 (attributed to Geoffrey Timms). Colossus 2 was much more flexible in that respect than Mk1, although they were all basically development machines, with the last one being different from the one built before it, and so on.

  7. John H Woods Silver badge

    Useful resource

    My kids, on seeing a 3.5" 1.44 MB* disk in TNMoC: "OMG that's why that funny symbol means 'save', finally it all becomes clear!"

    Just told this story to a co-worker. Her response? "OMG, it is! I never realised!"

    $DEITY I'm old.

    *ok it was actually 1.44 kilokibibytes (1.44 * 1000 * 1024) but that is what we used to call them, unless we were being risqué, then we called them 'stiffies'

    1. TVC

      Re: Useful resource

      Ah the 3.5" floppy you were lucky. All we had were 8" ones. I Remember our MD demonstrating their "flexibility" when hardly any one had seen them. He folded it in two and it never worked again.

  8. Bob Wheeler

    Background on RAF Eastcote - the orginal site for GCHQ!

    It's amazing the stuff I never knew!!

    http://ruislip.co.uk/eastcotemod/index.htm

    http://ruislip.co.uk/eastcotemod/enigma.htm

    1. Corinne

      Re: Background on RAF Eastcote - the orginal site for GCHQ!

      Hmm, not 100% sure they have all their dates right in the history of Eastcote bit. I'm pretty sure there was at least 1 mainframe running George3 around 1984/5, running alongside the 2900 series machines. I worked for the DTI (as was) at that time, and everyone had to spend a couple of weeks there when they joined the IT department. Most of the mainframes ran from massive disc platters that needed to be swapped out, but the George 3 machine still used paper tape and I think there were still a couple of jobs then that used punched card too. I'm a bit vague on the actual details on how these big beasts ran - it WAS over 30 years ago & I was never into the big hardware tech!

      1. Alistair Mann

        Re: Background on RAF Eastcote - the orginal site for GCHQ!

        I was an AA for 18 months there in the late '80s, tending the mainframes, and they were certainly still using ICL/George. I don't remember the 2900s , but I do remember the 2966 drives.

        Favourite memory: the emergency phone number list had The Black Horse local pub as the first number!

  9. Winkypop Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Well worth a long detour...

    I went well out of my way to see TMoC on a recent UK driving holiday.

    I dragged the wife along as well, mind, she had no choice.

    Great stuff, friendly people, could have chatted all day long.

    I enjoyed it too.

    : )

    I am now the proud owner of a Colossus coffee mug!

  10. John Jc

    I combined a visit with a trip to the other bits on the same site. A jolly good day out. Seeing kit I had worked with nearly 40 years ago brought back a lot of memories!

    Jc

  11. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Hmmm

    It's been a few years since I visited (Tony was still around). I absolutely must get there again this year.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Visit Bletchley Park, TNMOC or both?

    I was reading a year or two ago about how the adjacent Bletchley Park museum was seemingly a little antagonistic towards TNMOC and BP was busy dumbing down to be an "experience" for bored schoolkids en-route to the souvenir shop.

    What's the current situation - as a boring old computer geek should I plan a visit to include both or just TNMOC?

  13. Lars Silver badge
    Flame

    Oh dear

    "Colossus, the World’s first electronic digital programmable computer" as has been pointed out previosly was not " the World’s first electronic digital programmable computer". Zuse was the first, it's not that I don't uderstand the nationalistic problems of those years and the lack of information then, but facts are facts all the same, no need to commit suecide because of that. The first motorcycle is today 130 yesrs old no reason to commit suicide for that reason either, As a kid I had this feeling that the Russians claimed they had invented everything in this world and now I am confronted with adults as dumb in a western society.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A correction...

    "the EDSAC reconstruction project, an attempt to replicate Cambridge University’s ground-breaking stored-program computer, the first digital computer to provide computing as a service."

    Actually, it was the second to do so. The Manchester Mark 1 was the first to provide a computing service - just pipped EDSAC to the post.

    http://curation.cs.manchester.ac.uk/computer50/www.computer50.org/mark1/MM1.html

    states that the Intermediary Version "was available for general use by other university departments and Ferranti". The Intermediary Version was completed in April 1949, before EDSAC became operational in its original (also incomplete form) in May 1949.

  15. Tom -1

    Oh Dear @Lars

    The Zuse's Z3 was not an electronic computer, the logic was electromechanical relays, not anything electronic. The Z4 prototype build was not completed until the sping of 1945, not many days before the end of the war in Europe, and 16 months after the first Colossus, so the Z3 is the only Zuse computer you can be referring to, and it wasn't an electronic computer at all.

    The first programmable (not stored program) electronic digital computer Colossus, the first digital electronic computer was the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (which wasn't programmable), the first stored program electronic digital computer was the Manchester SSEM (ENIAC was earlier than the SSEM, but didn't support any stored program at first; a very limited stored program capability was added to ENIAC about 3 months after the SSEM was operational) and the first stored program electronic digital computer used to provide a computing service was the Manchester Mark 1 (which beat its rival, the Cambridge University EDSAC, by just one month).

    That is all well known history, a matter of record. Claiming that something that wasn't electronic was the first programmable electronic computer isn't going to change that history.

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