Monday 30 November, 2-4pm (GMT)

SASIG is delighted to offer this virtual live curated afternoon tour of The National Museum of Computing (TNMoC) at Bletchley Park, an institution dedicated to collecting and restoring historic computer systems. You will learn about and gain inspiration from the story of over 70 years of computing, and also have the opportunity to speak directly with the experts as they describe how the computers were used, telling anecdotes about their design and operation.

TNMoC’s unrivalled heritage site venue houses the world’s most extensive collection of historic functional computers, nearly all of which are in full working order. These include the Colossus, the world’s first electronic computer rebuilt over 15 years by a team of volunteers, 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 to the rise of personal computing in the 1980s and beyond. The Block H building in which it is based was the first purpose-built computer centre in the world, hosting six Colossus computers by the end of World War II. Information about the galleries and what you can see during a tour is available here, and there’s a video summary of when SASIG was fortunate to visit the museum at the beginning of the year, before lockdown. A short video with further details about the museum to whet your appetite is here.

PLEASE NOTE: The museum is an independent charity separate to Bletchley Park itself. It relies entirely on the generosity of admission fees, voluntary donations and corporate supporters. Through conserving and reconstructing historic computing machinery, it continues to bring to life the history and the ongoing development of computing.

For this fantastic opportunity, we ask SASIG members to contribute a modest fee of £10 to join us as we marvel at history in action. There is also the opportunity to top up this fee with a voluntary donation. SASIG will also be donating a further £10* to the museum for every participant who attends, in recognition of it currently experiencing a reduction in its funding during the lockdown in England.

* Up to £500