[SIGCIS-Members] Fwd: Bletchley Park update and new Colossus video

[Marie Hicks]

Thanks for this forward, Brian.

It's nice to see a high-profile company taking an interest in British computing history.

I'll try to put something up on the sigcis blog about this-- it's no doubt a developing story that people will be interested in following.

Best,

Marie

_______________
Marie Hicks, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of History of Technology
Lewis Department of the Humanities
Illinois Institute of Technology
Chicago, IL
mhicks1 at iit.edu
www.mariehicks.net


On Mar 11, 2012, at 16:32, Brian Randell <Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk> wrote:

> Hi Tom:
> 
> I have Sue Black's permission to forward this to you for SIGCIS.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Brian
> 
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> From: Sue Black <s.black at cs.ucl.ac.uk>
>> Date: 9 March 2012 01:32:41 GMT
>> Subject: Bletchley Park update and new Colossus video
>> 
>> Dear all,
>> 
>> Google have made a really lovely, poignant film about Tommy Flowers and Colossus, I urge you all to watch it. It features several of the people that worked with him at the time and really evokes for me the same feelings that I get when I go to Bletchley Park. The people working there did such amazing things, shortening the war by 2 years and on the whole got no credit at all.
>> 
>> Film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knXWMjIA59c
>> 
>> Related blogpost: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/remembering-colossus-worlds-first.html
>> 
>> While I'm on the subject of Bletchley....The Turing exhibition was officially opened this week by James May of Top Gear fame. It is a lovely and interesting exhibition including Turing's school reports, Turing's teddy bear and a copy of a letter from out very own Professor Brian Randell to Turing's mother. If you get the opportunity please go to see it, and take your staff, and students, friends, neighbours etc. ;))
>> 
>> Prof John Clark at York kindly invited me and the former and current CEOs of Bletchley Park (Iain Standen and Simon Greenish) to University of York last night to give a public lecture entitled: Did Twitter save Bletchley Park? About 200 people turned out on a windy night, they were a lovely audience :)) When we asked them at the end of our talk to decide whether Twitter did save Bletchley Park they said YES! :))  Slides from our talk are here:
>> 
>> http://www.slideshare.net/blackse/did-twitter-save-bletchley-park
>> 
>> I can't remember if I told you all but Google gave Bletchley Park £500k at the end of last year, and I'm hoping that the relationship between them will carry on developing. I'm going to go to the US as part of a fundraising tour with Sir John Scarlett, new Bletchley Park Trust Chair, later this year which should be fun and will hopefully bring in new streams of revenue :))
>> 
>> I think that's all for now, please do watch the film, it is very evocative.
>> 
>> Take care all
>> 
>> Sue
> 
> 
> --
> School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne,
> NE1 7RU, UK
> EMAIL = Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
> FAX = +44 191 222 8232  URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
> 
> 
> 
> 
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