As a recruiter with specialisms in cyber security and business IT, there are few more suitable places to be based than Bletchley Park – home of the Codebreakers.

 

The iconic site housed cryptanalysts from across the country, cracking the communications of Axis powers during World War II. Historians have said the intelligence produced at Bletchley shortened the war by two to four years, and that without it the outcome of the war would have been uncertain.

 

Now, of course, the site acts as a museum to the crucial role the site played in the Allied victory, displaying the infamous Enigma machine – thought to be the most complex cipher machine developed by the Germans – and the Turing-Welchman Bombe – the electro-mechanical device invented by Alan Turing and Gordon Gordon to crack the code.

 

There are now plans to move the reconstruction of the Turing-Welchman Bombe to a new location on the Bletchley Park Estate — Block H, the home of The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) with a crowdfunding campaign to create a new Bombe Gallery close to the existing Colossus gallery.

 

Together the two machines will give visitors an unparalleled insight of the wartime code-breaking genius at Bletchley Park and the beginnings of our digital world.

 

John Harper, chair of Turing Welchman Bombe Rebuild Trust (TWBRT), explained: “After careful consideration of the options, TWBRT Trustees approached The National Museum of Computing, which agreed to host the Bombe exhibit. We are delighted with this solution and welcome the opportunity to remain part of the overall visitor attraction at Bletchley Park.

 

“Our team of volunteers is looking forward to continuing to demonstrate how the Bombes made their vital contribution to Bletchley Park’s wartime role in the new venue. We thank the Bletchley Park Trust for their co-operation over the years and are pleased that the story of the Bombe will remain very much part of the story that it tells.”

 

Andrew Herbert, chair of The National Museum of Computing, said: “To house the reconstructed Bombe close to the Colossus Rebuild makes a lot of sense from many perspectives. As a pre-computing electro-mechanical device, the Bombe will help our visitors better understand the beginnings of computing and the general thought processes that led to the development of Colossus and subsequent computers.

 

“The story of the design of the Bombe by Alan Turing, the father of computer science, leads very appropriately into the eight decades of computing that we curate. Even the manufacture of the Bombes leads directly to British computing history — the originals were built by the British Tabulating Machine company (BTM) in Letchworth, which later became part of ICT, then ICL and now Fujitsu.

 

“A further benefit of the relocation is that as working reconstructions both the Bombe and Colossus need constant maintenance, skills for which TNMOC volunteers are globally renowned. There will be a very real synergy of the complementary skillsets of the Bombe and Colossus teams who have a profound understanding of the technologies available to those astonishing code-breaking pioneers.”

 

We urge you to get involved in this campaign, celebrating a hugely important part of British history.