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 | Fundraising Progress
Our
official fundraising launch is set for November 28th, so look out for
press articles and features in the preceding weeks. You can already
make donations using the museum web site - see the link that follows
for more information. If you would like to suggest any companies or individuals we should definitely invite to the launch, and you have some up to date contact information for them, please do get in touch. Click here for donations | |
 | ICL 2966
At
last the ICL 2966 has been moved to its proper place in the museum.
This behemoth has been in storage for almost ten years and it's quite
fantastic to see it all together again. There is a huge amount of work
to get this machine functioning and at least part of that
recommissioning is going to form the final year project for a computer
engineering student. Click here for more pictures of the system | |
 | The Electronic Office
Many
of our visitors, at least those of us old enough to remember Elvis,
will recognise the displays in this new gallery. We have four office
environments from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s showing typical systems
from those periods. Accounting systems move from punched card, through
to visible record machines, to desktop computers. Word processing
followed a similar route from electronic typewriters, through dedicated
systems, again to desktop computers. | |
 | A Moving plea for help!
I
mentioned in the last newsletter that we are hoping to move an IBM 1130
and other systems from Liverpool down to the museum. The 1130 is a
particularly iconic machine from IBM's past. Sadly the big blue giant
has declined to help, so we would welcome advice on a potential sponsor
to help move this equipment down to Milton Keynes. The equipment is
obviously delicate but already on pallets so will be easy to move for
those suitably equipped! | |
 | New volunteers
The
museum always welcomes new volunteers, and we are pleased to welcome
Tony, Kevin, Adam & Mathieu who joined us recently. Over the past
few months it has been more like the museum of painting and decorating,
but curating and computer engineering has still gone on. Our PDP11/34
is up and running, one of our older ICT card punches is now working
well, and the analogue computers are on display and doing whatever it
is they do - sadly beyond your editor with his (very old) A-level maths! | |
The Cipher Challenge Event
On
November 15th we plan to recreate the original transmission of
encrypted messages from Germany to the UK for subsequent decryption by
the Colossus computer. A set of specially created messages will be
enciphered using an original Lorenz machine at the Heinz Nixdorf Museum
in Paderborn, transmitted over radio to Bletchley, punched onto paper
tape, decrypted using Colossus and returned to plain text using the
Tunny machine. Click here for more information about the Cipher Challenge
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