Bletchley Park: New crisis for code-breaking hub

Note: this is the Bletchley Park Trust (https://bletchleypark.org.uk/), which ironically doesn't own or maintain the code breaking and configuration machines.

The machines are maintained and operated by the National Museum of Computing - https://www.tnmoc.org/

There has been some conflicts by these two entities, with Bletchley Park playing dirty a few times.

Here are some of my thoughts on the place:

https://tomaytotomato.com/the-national-museum-of-computing-2...

If anyone decides to visit, please also remember to visit the The National Museum of Computing. https://www.tnmoc.org/

It is literally next door but not part of "Bletchley Park" - BP gets all of the media attention and donations from corporate sponsors etc, but TNMOC has some equally interesting stuff (including a Collosus which is one of several claiming to be "the first computer") but does not seem to get the attention it deserves.

I suggest changing the title to something like "Bletchley Park is preparing to lay off 35 people"

It's been on my list to visit since forever. I made a donation so hopefully it will still be open when we can travel freely again.

For anybody interested in what working at Bletchley Park must’ve been like during the wartime years, beyond the endless dramas and the dramatically inaccurate Imitation Game, I very much recommend Ian Harris’ Enigma (1995) which triggered off my obsession with the place back twenty-five years ago, more or less when they began rebuilding the Colossus Mk II (which I was delighted to see in full operation the last time I visited Bletchley Park/National Computing Museum in 2011).

EDIT: Fixed spelling.

Their accounts pre Covid look pretty healthy for a charity https://beta.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-details/?subid... so hopefully they'll be able to remain going by temporarily cutting down on staff.

When I went there were almost more volunteers than visitors, so there's no shortage of willing people to help

I hope they make it out all right. I got the chance to visit a few years ago and was one of my favourite museum experiences.

Everything is set up similar to how it was during the war and you can basically just walk up the desk Turing sat at. Like, I could probably have touched it if I wanted to.

I also didn't realize how many famous names in graph theory came from there.

For those interested in Bletchley Park, it features prominently in the book Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War by Leo Marks. I read it maybe 10 years ago and it has a lot of good stuff about WWII codes and spying.

> "Eventually a big grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and major donations from tech firms, funded the restoration of the site and the building of a museum ..."

Personally I find ironic that a monument to the use of math to help win a war gets big funds from the lottery, which essentially is a tax on the lack of knowledge of maths. ...Or maybe it's the most brilliant way to make good use of that money.

However, I would also expect the military to donate the most money, due to the huge number of soldiers lives saved through intercepting Nazi communications. Also they would deserve some form of tax exemption. It's not just about maintaining some buldings and people working there, but also keeping that memory alive, which is priceless.

Different article about this topic discussed 2 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24243478

(Only a small discussion so probably doesn't quite count as a dupe).

> Over the weekend, it emerged that the museum at the wartime code-breaking centre was facing a financial crisis because of the coronavirus - and that meant it was preparing to lay off 35 people, a third of its workforce.

How is this a crisis at all? The museum was closed and opened with reduced attendance and doesn’t need this staff. I guess if you can’t separate the museum and the staff this is a crisis, or rather a crisis for its payroll.

If we want these sites to persist, we must be willing to cut payroll and staff, even if it means drastically reducing the hours. It’s the site that we’re preserving.