From sci-fi to sci-fact - Easter Bytes

Easter Bytes the biggest and best Bytes festival yet

Every afternoon, 12 noon to 5pm, 25 March – 10 April 2016

There is fun for all the family at Easter Bytes Festival at The National Museum of Computing on Bletchley Park with technology past and present, fact and fiction.

The biggest and best Bytes Festival yet kicks off with sci-fi features on Easter weekend. Star Wars characters from the UK Garrison plus four Daleks and the man behind the Daleks’ voices will be in residence on Saturday 26 March. There will be free entry that weekend for under 16s who come dressed in sci-fi costumes! (Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.)

And that’s only the start of the Bytes Festival! Across the 17 days, there are lots of events, appearances and workshops sure to fascinate every member of the family.

The sci-fi turns to sci-fact when MyndPlay lets you control devices using the power of your mind with the first Virtual Reality-ready brainwave headset!

The magic continues when Pi-top brings the world’s first 3d printed laptop and runs sessions with Raspberry-Pi operated laptops.

There will also be lots of workshops to keep fingers busy and minds active. Have an introduction to coding with FUZE and Bits and Bytes, join Tablet Academy to learn about Minecraft, meet, greet and even program OhBot the robot, design your own video game, create an app with Blippit and have a go with Oculus Rift.

There are chances to win great prizes, like Wacom’s creative tablets, too.

There won’t be a dull moment among seven decades of computing in the home of Colossus. The whole Museum will be fully open to the public 25 March - 10 April. Even Bernie the Northampton Saints Rugby Club mascot is coming to see what’s happening on Thursday 31 March.

For the full programme of events, see our Bytes Festivals page. TNMOC is on Bletchley Park, just a short walk from Bletchley train station.

About The National Museum of Computing

The National Museum of Computing, located on Bletchley Park, is an independent charity housing the world's largest collection of functional historic computers, including the rebuilt Colossus, the world’s first electronic computer, and the WITCH, the world's oldest working digital computer. The Museum enables visitors to follow the development of computing from the ultra-secret pioneering efforts of the 1940s through the large systems and mainframes of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and the rise of personal computing in the 1980s and beyond.

The Museum runs a highly successful Learning Programme for schools and colleges and promotes introductions to computer coding amongst young people, especially females, to inspire the next generation of computer scientists and engineers. In 2016, Fujitsu will be creating a Fujitsu Innovation Hub in the TNMOC Classroom for visiting students and general visitors.

Funders of the Museum have included Bletchley Park Capital Partners, Bloomberg, CreateOnline, Ceravision, Fujitsu, InsightSoftware.com, Ocado Technology, FUZE, 4Links, Google UK, IBM, NPL, HP Labs, and BCS.

Outside the Easter Bytes period, the whole Museum is open to the public from 12 noon - 5pm on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, spring and summer Bank Holidays and during long school holidays. The Colossus and Tunny galleries are open daily. Public and private Guided Tours are available and bookable online – see the website or the iPhone app for details. Educational and corporate group visits are available by prior arrangement.

For more information about TNMOC and trustees, see www.tnmoc.org and follow @tnmoc on Twitter and The National Museum of Computing on Facebook and Google+. A TNMOC iPhone App is also available from the iPhone App Store.

Media Contact

Stephen Fleming, Palam Communications
01635 299116
s.fleming@palam.co.uk