update: BCS: New Colossus Gallery, Bletchley Park

24th January 2013 - New Colossus Gallery at Bletchley Park

Time: 7pm , for a tour start at 7:30pm finishing at approx.. 9pm.

Presenter: Barney Duffy

Venue: Bletchley Park, Sherwood Drive, Bletchley, Milton Keynes, MK3 6EB.

Synopsis: 

Visiting the new Colossus Gallery with the ability to walk around the system. Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, had a single purpose: to help decipher the Lorenz-encrypted (Tunny) messages between Hitler and his generals during World War II. The Colossus Gallery housing the rebuild of Colossus tells that remarkable story. Colossus reduced the time to work out the Lorenz chi-wheel settings and enabled more messages to be deciphered and the whole code-breaking operation to be accelerated. The information gleaned from the decrypted messages is widely acknowledged to have shortened the war by many months, saving tens of thousands of lives. The cipher text was input via paper tape and the 2500 valves of Colossus would find the Lorenz machine chi-wheel settings. By the end of the war, 63 million characters of high-grade German communications had been decrypted by 550 people helped by the ten Colossus computers. Plus a look at the NPL gallery, how the internet was built. 

Directions

BCS: New Colossus Gallery, Bletchley Park

23rd or 24th January 2013 - New Colossus Gallery at Bletchley Park

Time: 7pm , for a tour start at 7:30pm finishing at approx.. 9pm.

Presenter: Barney Duffy Chair, BCS Northampton (2012-2013)

Venue: Bletchley Park, Sherwood Drive, Bletchley, Milton Keynes, MK3 6EB.

Synopsis: 

Visiting the new Colossus Gallery with the ability to walk around the system. Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, had a single purpose: to help decipher the Lorenz-encrypted (Tunny) messages between Hitler and his generals during World War II. The Colossus Gallery housing the rebuild of Colossus tells that remarkable story. Colossus reduced the time to work out the Lorenz chi-wheel settings and enabled more messages to be deciphered and the whole code-breaking operation to be accelerated. The information gleaned from the decrypted messages is widely acknowledged to have shortened the war by many months, saving tens of thousands of lives. The cipher text was input via paper tape and the 2500 valves of Colossus would find the Lorenz machine chi-wheel settings. By the end of the war, 63 million characters of high-grade German communications had been decrypted by 550 people helped by the ten Colossus computers. Plus a look at the NPL gallery, how the internet was built. 

Directions

International Conference comes to Northampton

The 7th China-Europe International Symposium on Software Engineering Education was here in Northampton. This is the first time that the conference came to the UK.

The feedback we received so far is extremely positive. One delegate said: "this is an overwhelming experience" and others " I enjoyed the conference",  "Congratulations for the excellent organisation of CEISIE'11 in Northampton"  and "I am so happy to have met all of you in UK"

Other than about 30 papers from Europe and China, three key note speakers who informed the attendees about the HE, ethical and governmental aspects of Green Computing.

The programme included a visit to Bletchley Park, part of which was the National Museum of Computing, including a guide tour of Colossus. The  closing ceremony for the conference was held there too.

Sun Zhigang from Harbin Institute of Technology, china was awarded the  “Best Paper of CEISIE2011” prize. 

The conference was sponsored HP and NEP (ex NEL).