A nice stained-glass roof
TouchType does Bletchley Park, Bletchley, Bedfordshire - 20th July 2012
Work organises a day trip to Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes - home of "Station X" and the top-secret code-breakers whose work is sometimes considered to have shortened World War II by a couple of years. For a software company, it's almost the equivalent of a pilgrimage, as it hosts a rebuilt Colossus - the world's first semi-programmable computer, built by GPO engineer Tommy Flowers and which helped crack the Lorenz ciphers used by the Nazi high command. Whilst several of the huts have been renovated, there's still a good selection of the original buildings in a somewhat decaying state - perfect "dereliction" fodder.
next album: Stick Game at the Cross Keys, Redgrave, Suffolk - 20th July 2012
previous album: Seomun Market, Daegu, South Korea - 1st July 2012
Milling around in our 'room for the day'
Our tour guide rounds us up
There's an intro talk by the Post Office
An old garage
Błaże sticks a hand up, as Poland is mentioned
More history talks
Dilly Knox's cottage
The derelict Hut 2
Derelict corridor in Hut 2
A close-up of Hut 2
There's a talk in the Bombe room
A reconstruction of the Bombe
A shelf of Bombe inputs
We walk back to Bletchley House
Back in the 'Churchill Room' prior to some lunch
We explore the grand ballroom
An ornate ceiling
Bletchley Park Manor
A wartime Austin 7 and a Willys Jeep
Ad-hoc paintwork on some galvanised garage doors
Bletchley's huts
Some more dilapidated wooden huts
The tour guide shows us the 'radio room'
There's an introduction to Colossus
5-bit International Teletype-encoded punched tape
The stunning rebuild of Colossus
More Colossus
Some bit of Colossus is repaired
An oscilloscope traces out Colossus' output
Anita and Błaże
Racks of valves and wires
A huge bank of hot valves
Jon reaches out as if to touch the beast
Collosus's paper tape drive
A close-up of valves
Another look at insane wiring
Chris's Tigger is on a typewriter
Abandoned furniture
Old security gate, and an electric substation
A heating-oil tank room
Touchtype walks about in the rain
Inside the electro-mechanical Bombe
A slate statue of Alan Turing
More derelict buildings around the site
A 1940s building entrance
Peeling paint
Boarded-up buildings
An exit sign on a boarded building
Some of the renovated non-public parts of the site
Renovated, but not public, 1940s buildings
Boxes in an abandoned room
Some old computer monitors lie around
Some more mouldy buildings
More boardings and peeling paint
An ancient boiler room
Half a 'Hut 2' sign
Un-restored wartime huts
A plant grows up through some steps
A stack of chairs in a derelict hut
A hut whose roof is open to the elements
Back in the Churchill Room
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A nice stained-glass roof
A nice stained-glass roof
Milling around in our 'room for the day'
Our tour guide rounds us up
There's an intro talk by the Post Office
An old garage
Błaże sticks a hand up, as Poland is mentioned
More history talks
Dilly Knox's cottage
The derelict Hut 2
Derelict corridor in Hut 2
A close-up of Hut 2
There's a talk in the Bombe room
A reconstruction of the Bombe
A shelf of Bombe inputs
We walk back to Bletchley House
Back in the 'Churchill Room' prior to some lunch
We explore the grand ballroom
An ornate ceiling
Bletchley Park Manor
A wartime Austin 7 and a Willys Jeep
Ad-hoc paintwork on some galvanised garage doors
Bletchley's huts
Some more dilapidated wooden huts
The tour guide shows us the 'radio room'
There's an introduction to Colossus
5-bit International Teletype-encoded punched tape
The stunning rebuild of Colossus
More Colossus
Some bit of Colossus is repaired
An oscilloscope traces out Colossus' output
Anita and Błaże
Racks of valves and wires
A huge bank of hot valves
Jon reaches out as if to touch the beast
Collosus's paper tape drive
A close-up of valves
Another look at insane wiring
Chris's Tigger is on a typewriter
Abandoned furniture
Old security gate, and an electric substation
A heating-oil tank room
Touchtype walks about in the rain
Inside the electro-mechanical Bombe
A slate statue of Alan Turing
More derelict buildings around the site
A 1940s building entrance
Peeling paint
Boarded-up buildings
An exit sign on a boarded building
Some of the renovated non-public parts of the site
Renovated, but not public, 1940s buildings
Boxes in an abandoned room
Some old computer monitors lie around
Some more mouldy buildings
More boardings and peeling paint
An ancient boiler room
Half a 'Hut 2' sign
Un-restored wartime huts
A plant grows up through some steps
A stack of chairs in a derelict hut
A hut whose roof is open to the elements
Back in the Churchill Room