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dave_future_predatorOr What We Did At Half Term.
I slipped Dave and Ryan into my bag to cries of 'Have we ever been on holiday without Dave?' to which I replied 'Not so you would remember, probably not', and that was that.
After a bloody stormy drive to Rugby, whereupon we stayed at the cheapest Premier Inn between us and Milton Keynes, we set off the next day to Bletchley Park. This is the place where much of the codebreaking was coordinated in World War II, and where Alan Turing, father of computer science and artificial intelligence (Wikipedia, though it sounds right), worked during the war.
I should say that I once had a long chat with an old lady who said she'd worked there during the war, and because she was a married woman, unlike many of the young ladies there, Mr Turing had actually talked to her. She had once seen him throw a teacup into the lake. I was fascinated to visit Bletchley and see where the Enigma machine had been cracked, as it were.
Bletchley was nothing like I had imagined, but it was wonderful. There was a lake! Right in front of the small but beautiful house.
Here's Dave sitting on a griffin? at the front door.
You can see these chaps are probably new, and work has been done on the house. The place must have been in a dreadful state before it got saved in about 2000, because Bletchley is not just this house, it is a vast sprawl of old huts and buildings, both wood and brick, and some of them are still rotting away. They've done a marvelous job in restoration so far, which is fantastic. What they did here was so secret it remained so for so long we almost forgot to save it, and that would have been a tragedy.
Anyway, we had a nice tour, learned a lot about how they broke the German codes and so on, and the hut that Alan Turing worked out of was in a reasonable state and had heating, yay! Bloody cold day. So, here is his office, with a teacup chained to the radiator, just where the guide said it would be when I told him my lake-teacup story.
We saw the rebuilds of machines they used to help them crack the codes, and they even had Alan Turing's teddy bear.
Because we went on a Thursday, The National Museum of Computing, housed in one of the huts, was open. This was an absolutely cracking place, highly recommended for anyone with an interest in computers. Or slide rules.
Yes, I played Jet Set Willy and looked at Lisa, one of the earliest Apple computers, and got to play on an old BBC computer and really go back in time. But there were two stars of the show - Colossus, and the Harwell Dekatron.
Colossus was originally built at Bletchley Park for code breaking, and was the world's first programmable electronic digital computer. By the end of the war they had 10 in operation. After the war everything about them was supposedly destroyed. In 2007 they built a replica, using plans and photos that had 'accidentally' survived, and with the help of some of the people who had worked on it in the war. They made much of it from bits that BT were chucking out *g* though some of the valves are actually contemporaneous with the original computer. It was an insane beast, and made a lovely racket as the paper tape punched with holes whizzed around. No, I still don't really know what it did.
The Harwell Dekatron was even more amazing really. It is the world's oldest surviving working electronic programmable computer. It was built to do maths for nuclear scientists. Two of the blokes who worked at the museum told us lots about it and the kids got to make it work.
The little glowing things on the right are dekatrons, a cold cathode tube that had a kind of spinning light thing going on. When the light stopped, the position of the glowing bit corresponds to a number, so you can read your answer. They had the printer switched off because the computer is holding up well to the passage of time but the printer was on its last legs :p The whole machine made a sound like a load of knitting needles, it was a lot of fun.
The next day we went to London and had a flying visit to the National Gallery to see Henri Rousseau's Surprise, a rather splendid painting of a tiger that doesn't look like a tiger at all. Little miss has been studying it in art. Needless to say, no photos allowed. After a glance at Van Gogh's Sunflowers in the same room, and a whizz to see Constable's The Hay Wain (Bloody hell! It's huge! And so much going on. The reprints are hopeless.) we trotted off to the British Museum.
The Ice Age exhibition is amazing and thoroughly recommended. I know it might only be a few marks on a bit of bone or stone, but you try drawing a reindeer and see how you get on! These things were incredible. Amazing art. I had seen the TV programme about it, and that really helped, seeing how some chap recreated the 40,000 year old Lion Man and it took him 400 hours. Yes, some things were replicas, but overall it was a quite stunning display. We also took a quick trip to the Mexico room to see the Olmec man that Dr Jago Cooper said was one of his faves *g*
Our last visit of the trip was to Waltham Abbey on Saturday. This is the site of the Royal Gunpowder Mills, and for hundreds of years served the British Military, first making gunpowder in the 1600s and right up until 1991 a site of rocket propulsion research! Another freezing day, but Professor Nitrate had us warmed up with experiments of fire and explosion and big bangs *g*
In some ways, it reminded me of Bletchley Park, a vast site of crumbling buildings, no longer needed. Barges used to move gunpowder up and down the country, and the waterways proved handy for diving into if your gunpowder accidentally blew up. Actually they were still having horrible accidents making TNT in 1940, so. All rather nasty.
One of these buildings purportedly has a floor of elephant hide... nice and tough and no risk of sparks!!
When gunpowder was old hat, they moved on to cordite, then TNT and then rocket fuel over the years. They have a *really* impressive collection of rockets. Dave liked this shiny green one. It's a Law 80, in use from 1987 and still used today.
But this was a fascinating find! It's a replica of PROSPERO, a satellite launched in 1971 by a British Black Arrow rocket, the only time a British satellite was launched by a British rocket. It was used to test solar panels and stuff :) Prospero is still up there now!
They also had an impressive collections of knives and guns, presumbably continuing the cordite theme. However, Dave liked the machine guns.
All in all, a very geeky and interesting trip. Ryan may or may not still be in my handbag.
I slipped Dave and Ryan into my bag to cries of 'Have we ever been on holiday without Dave?' to which I replied 'Not so you would remember, probably not', and that was that.
After a bloody stormy drive to Rugby, whereupon we stayed at the cheapest Premier Inn between us and Milton Keynes, we set off the next day to Bletchley Park. This is the place where much of the codebreaking was coordinated in World War II, and where Alan Turing, father of computer science and artificial intelligence (Wikipedia, though it sounds right), worked during the war.
I should say that I once had a long chat with an old lady who said she'd worked there during the war, and because she was a married woman, unlike many of the young ladies there, Mr Turing had actually talked to her. She had once seen him throw a teacup into the lake. I was fascinated to visit Bletchley and see where the Enigma machine had been cracked, as it were.
Bletchley was nothing like I had imagined, but it was wonderful. There was a lake! Right in front of the small but beautiful house.
Here's Dave sitting on a griffin? at the front door.
You can see these chaps are probably new, and work has been done on the house. The place must have been in a dreadful state before it got saved in about 2000, because Bletchley is not just this house, it is a vast sprawl of old huts and buildings, both wood and brick, and some of them are still rotting away. They've done a marvelous job in restoration so far, which is fantastic. What they did here was so secret it remained so for so long we almost forgot to save it, and that would have been a tragedy.
Anyway, we had a nice tour, learned a lot about how they broke the German codes and so on, and the hut that Alan Turing worked out of was in a reasonable state and had heating, yay! Bloody cold day. So, here is his office, with a teacup chained to the radiator, just where the guide said it would be when I told him my lake-teacup story.
We saw the rebuilds of machines they used to help them crack the codes, and they even had Alan Turing's teddy bear.
Because we went on a Thursday, The National Museum of Computing, housed in one of the huts, was open. This was an absolutely cracking place, highly recommended for anyone with an interest in computers. Or slide rules.
Yes, I played Jet Set Willy and looked at Lisa, one of the earliest Apple computers, and got to play on an old BBC computer and really go back in time. But there were two stars of the show - Colossus, and the Harwell Dekatron.
Colossus was originally built at Bletchley Park for code breaking, and was the world's first programmable electronic digital computer. By the end of the war they had 10 in operation. After the war everything about them was supposedly destroyed. In 2007 they built a replica, using plans and photos that had 'accidentally' survived, and with the help of some of the people who had worked on it in the war. They made much of it from bits that BT were chucking out *g* though some of the valves are actually contemporaneous with the original computer. It was an insane beast, and made a lovely racket as the paper tape punched with holes whizzed around. No, I still don't really know what it did.
The Harwell Dekatron was even more amazing really. It is the world's oldest surviving working electronic programmable computer. It was built to do maths for nuclear scientists. Two of the blokes who worked at the museum told us lots about it and the kids got to make it work.
The little glowing things on the right are dekatrons, a cold cathode tube that had a kind of spinning light thing going on. When the light stopped, the position of the glowing bit corresponds to a number, so you can read your answer. They had the printer switched off because the computer is holding up well to the passage of time but the printer was on its last legs :p The whole machine made a sound like a load of knitting needles, it was a lot of fun.
The next day we went to London and had a flying visit to the National Gallery to see Henri Rousseau's Surprise, a rather splendid painting of a tiger that doesn't look like a tiger at all. Little miss has been studying it in art. Needless to say, no photos allowed. After a glance at Van Gogh's Sunflowers in the same room, and a whizz to see Constable's The Hay Wain (Bloody hell! It's huge! And so much going on. The reprints are hopeless.) we trotted off to the British Museum.
The Ice Age exhibition is amazing and thoroughly recommended. I know it might only be a few marks on a bit of bone or stone, but you try drawing a reindeer and see how you get on! These things were incredible. Amazing art. I had seen the TV programme about it, and that really helped, seeing how some chap recreated the 40,000 year old Lion Man and it took him 400 hours. Yes, some things were replicas, but overall it was a quite stunning display. We also took a quick trip to the Mexico room to see the Olmec man that Dr Jago Cooper said was one of his faves *g*
Our last visit of the trip was to Waltham Abbey on Saturday. This is the site of the Royal Gunpowder Mills, and for hundreds of years served the British Military, first making gunpowder in the 1600s and right up until 1991 a site of rocket propulsion research! Another freezing day, but Professor Nitrate had us warmed up with experiments of fire and explosion and big bangs *g*
In some ways, it reminded me of Bletchley Park, a vast site of crumbling buildings, no longer needed. Barges used to move gunpowder up and down the country, and the waterways proved handy for diving into if your gunpowder accidentally blew up. Actually they were still having horrible accidents making TNT in 1940, so. All rather nasty.
One of these buildings purportedly has a floor of elephant hide... nice and tough and no risk of sparks!!
When gunpowder was old hat, they moved on to cordite, then TNT and then rocket fuel over the years. They have a *really* impressive collection of rockets. Dave liked this shiny green one. It's a Law 80, in use from 1987 and still used today.
But this was a fascinating find! It's a replica of PROSPERO, a satellite launched in 1971 by a British Black Arrow rocket, the only time a British satellite was launched by a British rocket. It was used to test solar panels and stuff :) Prospero is still up there now!
They also had an impressive collections of knives and guns, presumbably continuing the cordite theme. However, Dave liked the machine guns.
All in all, a very geeky and interesting trip. Ryan may or may not still be in my handbag.
