Key source of British computing history becomes accessible to researchers
29 June 2009
The rapidly growing computing archive at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park is now open to researchers.
The collection which began only two years ago has just been re-housed in accessible shelving thanks to a generous donation by Compact Storage Ltd and it is now feasible for researchers to gain access to computer software, documentation, disks, cassettes, DVDs, films, videos that have marked the progress of computing, and especially British computing, over the past decades.
Highlights of the Archive include the complete ICL manufacturing archive on almost four million 35mm aperture cards and the complete Digital microfiche collection of over 10,000 films.
Led by TNMOC’s Archivist Alan Batley, the task of indexing and further expanding the archive is well underway. A fully-equipped office has been built alongside the Archive for researchers.
To request access to the Archive, researchers should email info@tnmoc.org explaining the nature and purpose of their work.
“The new shelving has almost tripled the capacity of our archiving space and, more importantly, made its contents accessible,” explained Kevin Murrell, a Director and Trustee of TNMOC. “Although this is certainly not the largest archive in the UK, it must be one of the biggest computer history collections that is accessible to researchers on request. We are indebted to Compact Storage Ltd for their very generous donation.”
Erik Batley, managing director of Compact Storage, said: “We’ve benefitted from business from computer companies over the years, so it was fitting that we make this donation to The National Museum of Computing.”
About The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park
The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, an independent charity, houses the largest collection of functional historic computers in Europe, including a rebuilt Colossus, the world’s first electronic programmable computer.
The Museum complements the Bletchley Park Trust’s story of codebreaking up to the Colossus and allows visitors to follow the development of computing from the ultra-secret pioneering efforts of the 1940s through the mainframes of the 1960s and 1970s, and the rise of personal computing in the 1980s. New working exhibits are regularly unveiled and the public can view a rebuilt and fully operational Colossus, a working ICL 2900, one of the workhorse mainframes computers of the 1980s, a slide rule display with devices dating back centuries, and many of the earliest desktops of the 1980s and 1990s in the newly-opened PC Gallery.
The Museum is currently open on Thursdays and Saturdays from 1pm, and on bank Holidays in spring and summer. Groups may visit at other times by arrangement.
For more information, see www.tnmoc.org
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