The National Museum of Computing is a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...

in the

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dedicated to collecting and restoring historic computer systems. The museum is based in rented premises at

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...

Milton Keynes Milton Keynes ( ) is a city and the largest settlement in Buckinghamshire, England, about north-west of London. At the 2021 Census, the population of its urban area was over . The River Great Ouse forms its northern boundary; a tributary ...

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and opened in 2007. The building — ''Block H'' — was the first purpose-built computer centre in the world, hosting six Colossus computers by the end of World War II. The museum houses a rebuilt Mark 2 Colossus computer alongside an exhibition of the most complex code cracking activities performed at the Park, along with examples of machines continuing the history of the development of computing from the 1940s to the present day. The museum has a policy of having as many of the exhibits as possible in full working order. Although located on the Bletchley Park "campus", The National Museum of Computing is an entirely separate registered charity with its own fund-raising and separate entrance/ticketing. TNMOC receives no public funding and relies on the generosity of donors and supporters.

Exhibits

On display in the museum are many famous early computing era machines, including a functioning Colossus Mark 2 computer that was rebuilt between 1993 and 2008 by a team of volunteers led by

Tony Sale Tony may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tony (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters * Gregory Tony (born 1978), American law enforcement officer * Motu Tony (born 1981), New Zealand international rugby leag ...

. Colossus was a machine that helped break enemy

encryption In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can d ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. Since 2018, the reconstruction of the

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, of the type used to help break Enigma, is also at the museum. The museum also includes the world's oldest working digital computer (the Harwell Dekatron / WITCH), machines from the 1960s such as the

Marconi Transistorised Automatic Computer (T.A.C.) The Marconi Transistorized Automatic Computer was the first all-transistor computer built by Britain's Marconi Company. It was designed and manufactured from around 1959. The computer employed germanium transistors which by this time were suffic ...

, Elliott 803 and 905, an ICL 2966 mainframe from the 1980s, an IBM 1130 from the 1960s, an analogue computer, a hands-on

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gallery, and several restoration projects such as the PDP-8 and the PDP-11-based

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system from London Terminal Control Centre at West Drayton near London. Further exhibits include

mechanical Mechanical may refer to: Machine * Machine (mechanical), a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement * Mechanical calculator, a device used to perform the basic operations ...

and electronic calculators, a history of slide rules, a pair of

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supercomputers, and a personal computing gallery with ten hands-on machines. Visitors can also see a re-build of the Cambridge University EDSAC computer that is underway (still in progress as of May 2019). There is also a suite which includes many BBC Micro personal computers which are used to encourage programming among visitors, a temporary exhibition space used for short-term exhibitions and a hands on display of video game consoles from different eras. All of this is alongside various other displays of devices and information regarding the evolution of computing from the 1960s to the modern era. Since 2009, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has sponsored a gallery about technology of the

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, featuring the pioneering work on packet switching carried out at NPL and the development of the first public data networks. The museum has its own cafe and gift shop.

Opening

The museum is open to the public 6 days a week, Tuesday to Sunday from 10:30 am to 5 pm, and most school and bank holidays. There are guided tours at 2pm on Tuesday and Wednesday, and 10:30am on Thursday. Booking for tours is recommended as there are limited places. There is a modest admission charge to the museum to help cover overheads and they now offer family and annual tickets. Demonstrations and talks in the Colossus and Tunny Galleries usually occur on the hour when the galleries are open, with slight changes depending on the number of visitors.

Funding

TNMOC entirely depends on voluntary and corporate donations and modest admission charges. Fund-raising continues and donors have included Bletchley Park Capital Partners,

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UK, CreateOnline, Ceravision, Insight software, PGP Corporation, IBM, NPL,

HP Labs HP Labs is the exploratory and advanced research group for HP Inc. HP Labs' headquarters is in Palo Alto, California and the group has research and development facilities in Bristol, UK. The development of programmable desktop calculators, in ...

, British Computer Society (BCS), Black Marble, and the School of Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire. The museum conducted a

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by cro ...

campaign in March 2018 to raise funds to build a new gallery for the

. The campaign raised over £43,000 via crowd-funding and an additional £20,000 via direct donations.

References

External links

Museum website
{{DEFAULTSORT:National Museum Of Computing Bletchley Park Buildings and structures in Milton Keynes Charities based in England Computer museums Computer museums in the United Kingdom Computer science education in the United Kingdom History museums in Buckinghamshire Museums established in 2007