Cash Lifeline For Bletchley Park

Smivs writes "Bletchley Park, the home to the allied codebreakers during WWII, and a major computing heritage centre, has been given a financial lifeline, reports the BBC. The grant of £330,000 will be used to undertake urgent roof works as the rooms of the Grade II-listed mansion, replete with painted ceilings, timber panelling, and ornate plasterwork, are at risk because the roof has been patched rather than renovated so many times during the 130 years of the mansion's history. The donation follows efforts to highlight the dilapidated state of the huts and other buildings at Bletchley. Discussions are also in progress on a further three-year, £600,000 funding programme for the historic site. 'Bletchley Park played a fundamental role in the Allies winning the Second World War and is of great importance to the history of Europe,' said Dr Simon Thurley, chief executive of English Heritage."

Re:So where do we send our bucks?

[dpoulson]

To donate via paypal go here:

http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/paypal-donate.rhtm [bletchleypark.org.uk]

or by WorldPay:

http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/shop/changeDonate.rhtm [bletchleypark.org.uk]

No excuses. If you live in the UK, go for a visit. Fantastic place full of great exhibits.

Darren.

Re:Lame.

[1stvamp]

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation refused to offer any support to Bletchley earlier this year.
http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/05/16/1225225.shtml [slashdot.org]

Re:Love for old crypto

[Yvanhoe]

Maybe it would have worked better if he actually wrote a historical novel. I am aware that I am bashing a popular author here but, seriously, at this place and time things happened that were so incredible that there is no need to add all this crappy fictional things around real facts. Simon Singh's "The Code Book" is far more breathtaking and it is a history book.

Heroism surrounded code breakers in Poland where the first mechanical algorithmic machines were made with the help of the secret services. Germany had their share of the game with their first programmable electronic device (some would call it a computer). The weirdness surrounding the decision of choosing an Indian language as American code (no, it was not because it was supposedly harder to break, but it was faster to have a native speaker of a code than a cryptographer who needed minutes to code even a short message). Bletchley recruitment effort that involved crosswords games, the sad story of Turing death cause by his mandated anti-homosexuality treatment, Yamamoto's death possible because of a message interception and so on...

WWII is so full of facts and anecdotes that trading them for a fictional content can only look tasteless...