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Tony Sale saved Bletchley Park. He was the instigator of the foundation and basically ran it single handed for a while. He believed deeply in it being preserved for the nation.

His main claim to fame before that was being Peter Wright’s right-hand man. Wright’s “Spycatcher”, talks of their joint exploits over the years. I got to ask Tony about it once, he was not too impressed Wright had done what he had done by writing that book.

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> telephony engineers (this was where ee excellence lived at the time)

Same in the US. It's why computers live in 19-inch racks.

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The National Museum of Computing (just up the road from Bletchley Park) has a working Colossus
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I don't think I would describe the NMC as "just up the road". It's the same physical site.

If you consider the NMC "just up the road" then the Bletchley Park site you're thinking of is also "jump up the road" from er, Bletchley Park, a stately home that's less interesting to a nerd than either the NMC or Bletchley Park museum about war era "intelligence" but might be fascinating if period furniture is more interesting to you than the world's first (for many different values of first, the museum has several options, but not all of them) programmable computer.

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the nmc is most interesting, but also pretty cool to see turing's office in hut 8 (i guess the portable classroom like structure for a computer lab is a trope that goes all the way back to the beginning)!
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that's what i was describing! :) it's on the bletchley site (they share a parking lot) and was where tony sale and friends rebuilt the colossus.

although i just looked. critically they have different ticket offices. it was a long time ago! either way, worth a visit of both and they make up an excellent way to spend a day.

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It's on the same site but there is some institutional nonsense that means getting onto the Bletchley site doesn't guarantee access to the NMoC, which is only open on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

Don't ask me how I know...

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They weren't all destroyed, some were moved to what became GCHQ (UK's equivalent to the NSA)

See Influence and Fate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer

It's Tommy Flowers I always felt sorry for, after the war he wanted a loan to build a computer was refused on the grounds that what he wanted to build was impossible. He knew it was possible but couldn't disclose that due to secrecy laws

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that's where they computed numberwang, right?
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It was a huge advancement. Previously they were computing numberwang on slide rules.
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That's wangernumb!
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