Bombe Crowdfunder raises £60,000

Turing-Welchman Bombe to stay on the Bletchley Park Estate
TNMOC Crowdfunder raises £60,000 donated by 500 supporters in four weeks

Following its hugely successful Crowdfunder, The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) on the Bletchley Park Estate has started planning a new gallery for the working reconstruction of the Turing-Welchman Bombe. Over four weeks, more than 500 supporters generously donated £60,000, £10,000 above the ambitious target set at the beginning of the campaign. Donations are still coming in.

Commissioning the creation for the new Bombe Gallery is now underway. Planned to open this summer, the gallery will be located close to the existing world-famous Colossus Gallery. Together these two displays will explore the ingenuity and inventiveness of the Second World War codebreakers -- and the beginnings of our digital world.

The Turing-Welchman Bombe accelerated the breaking of Enigma-enciphered messages revealing enemy operations. Colossus, created by a team led by Tommy Flowers, sped up the deciphering of Lorenz strategic messages of Hitler and his German High Command.

Andrew Herbert, chair of trustees at The National Museum of Computing, said: “The generosity of the Crowdfunder donors has astonished us. As an organisation that is reliant solely on sales and voluntary donations for income, we initially thought that the £50,000 target, although necessary, might be too ambitious. We continue to receive off-Crowdfunder donations, but we already know that we have exceeded our target by £10,000.

“The messages of support we have received from donors are also inspiring and motivating. It’s clear that the public understand and appreciate what we strive to do in presenting dynamic displays about the development of computing from its earliest days.”

The breadth and depth of interest in the project is evident in the 168 notes of support on the Crowdfunder website. Donations came from people of all ages and from all walks of life, from organisations, from world-famous museums and from many parts of the world:

I was at Bletchley Park during the war building the original Bombe. Delighted that the replica Bombe will have a new home next to Colossus. (93-year-old woman)

Your work is both an inspiration today and a wonderful monument to those who conceived and built the originals.

Having joined ICL in 1970 and spent most of my working life in computing, I wish to see our computing heritage secure and available for future students to understand.

The UK micro-computing explosion in the 70s and 80s made me part of the brain drain but I'm proud of the history that got me over here, so I try to pay it back when I can. (from the USA)

One day I'll be there to see the machine with my eyes, please keep going maintaining those machines that make computer history alive.(from Italy)

The Bombe and Colossus need to be shown together – it’s an historical step change.

Andrew Herbert concluded: “We warmly thank everyone who made the Bombe Crowdfunder such a resounding success. Trustees, staff and our highly skilled volunteer force now relish the prospect of telling even more of the stories of the people and the machines that changed our world. By conserving our digital heritage, we aim to engage and inspire students, computing professionals and the general public from across the world.”

The original Crowdfunder appeal can be seen here.

Notes To Editors

About the Turing-Welchman Bombe reconstruction

The Turing-Welchman Bombe was the electro-mechanical device designed by Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman, based on a Polish concept, to automate the deciphering of Enigma-encrypted messages during the Second World War.

In the early 1990s John Harper, a retired engineer, was inspired to recruit a team to reconstruct a Bombe machine as a tribute to the wartime code-breakers at Bletchley Park. The reconstructed Bombe was completed and officially launched in 2007. The reconstruction replicates the standard British Bombe that contained 36 Enigma equivalents, each with three drums wired to produce the same enciphering effect as the Enigma cipher machine motors.

About The National Museum of Computing

The National Museum of Computing, located on Bletchley Park in Block H, one of England’s ‘irreplaceable places’, is an independent charity housing the world's largest collection of functional historic computers, including the rebuilt Colossus, the world’s first electronic computer, 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, and the rise of personal computing in the 1980s and beyond.

The Museum runs a highly successful Learning Programme for schools and colleges and promotes introductions to computer coding amongst young people to inspire the next generation of computer scientists and engineers.

Sponsors of the Museum have included Bletchley Park Science and Innovation Centre, Fujitsu, InsightSoftware.com, Paessler, Sophos, Lenovo, Bloomberg, Ocado Technology, Ceravision, CreateOnline, 4Links, Google UK, IBM, NPL, HP Labs, FUZE and BCS.

The whole Museum is open to the public from 12 noon - 5 pm on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, spring and summer Bank Holidays. During long school holidays, there are additional opening days. The Colossus and Tunny galleries are open daily. Public and private Guided Tours are available and bookable online – see the website for details. Educational and corporate group visits are available by prior arrangement.

For more information, see www.tnmoc.org and follow @tnmoc on Twitter and The National Museum of Computing on Facebook and Google+.

Media Contacts

Stephen Fleming, Palam Communications, for The National Museum of Computing
01635 299116
s.fleming@palam.co.uk