On Tuesday 20th Sept, five bus loads of students and academics from @BCUComputing went on a 75 mile trip to visit Bletchley Park. A selection of photographs from the trip can be seen below, most being from the mansion, huts, cottages and museum (Block B). Some further images are available on flickr (online).
Around the same last year I attended two lectures organised by the BCS about Enigma (online) which gave some very interesting insight into the work of Bletchley Park. The post contains an embedded video from one of the lectures that is very much worthwhile to take a look at, as it gives a good deal of background to the Enigma, the Battle of the North Atlantic and the work undertaken at Bletchley Park.
We spent around four hours at Bletchley and really only managed a quick glimpse of the facility, which makes a lot of sense considering the many many thousands of people who were working their throughout the war. There is just so much to see, one could easily spend two full days having a quick look around. Will most certainly have to visit again as I didn’t visit all the huts and blocks or The National Museum of Computing.
Upon arrival at Bletchley Park around 11:00 the students had the opportunity to have a look around the estate before heading to the Teleprinter Hall at 12:00 for an hour long series of talks by Academics from BCU Computing. These talks included a general welcome, a talk on placement opportunities (as seen in the tweets below) and some discussion around keys / security.
After this series of talks it was now around lunchtime so many ventured to the Canteen situated in Hut 4 located right next to the Mansion. With lunch sorted it was then time for some further exploration of Bletchley Park, taking in all the various Huts, Cottages, Garages and the Museum located in Block B. All attendees were provided with a very useful Multimedia Guide comprising of map, imagery and audio / video segments to help guide one around the parks and augment ones tour with some very useful information about the various locations and their function. Some staff and students also had the opportunity of getting in a few rounds of table tennis in the scenic grounds before climbing aboard the busses for the journey back to Birmingham.
In summary it was a really great day out, meeting up at 08:30, setting off a bit after 09:00, arriving a bit after 11:00 and eventually returning by 17:30. A huge word of thanks to all involved in organising this fantastic adventure.
One can visit the following websites for further information
https://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/
http://www.tnmoc.org/
Dr. Daniel C. Doolan News & Photos 