New home for UK computer history

The UK is to get a new museum dedicated to its place in the early development on computing technologies.

The National Museum of Computing will be based at Bletchley Park – famous for being the location where the Allies broke many of the high-level codes used for German communications in the Second World War.

At the centre of the exhibition will be the recently rebuilt Colossus computer, which played a major role in code breaking during that period.

"I cannot think of a better place than Bletchley to put the museum, " said one of the founders of the Trust trying to establish the museum, Andy Clark. "It’s a key part of the modern history of the computer."

"This is not a museum of computers but of computing," he said, before stating that it was the Trust’s intention to have every machine on display restored to show how they worked.

"Where else would you be able to surf the net on a machine from 1976?" he added.

The museum will have an un-official opening today when the Trust holds a conference on how to restore and conserve past computers for future generations.