PGP, IBM help Bletchley Park raise funds

A campaign will be launched on Tuesday to ask U.S. tech companies to help save Bletchley Park, whose wartime work helped lay the foundations of modern computing and crytography.

The fund-raising campaign will be led by cryptography provider PGP, together with IBM and other technology firms. Phil Dunkelberger, chief executive of PGP, told ZDNet UK in a video interview that the group of companies would be making donations to repair the buildings at Bletchley Park, including the National Museum of Computing, and would be calling for other organizations to get involved.

"We're calling attention (to the fact that) Bletchley is falling into disrepair, and that, probably, the world owes a debt of gratitude to that place," Dunkelberger said.

Bletchley Park is famous for being the nerve center of U.K. code-breaking operations during World War II, and for being the home of the world's first programmable computer, Colossus.

Historians suggested in May that "without Bletchley Park, the allies may never have won the war." At that time, they said the Bletchley Park site and museum "faced a bleak future unless it could secure funding to keep its doors open and its numerous exhibits from rotting away."

While the buildings at Bletchley Park are under no immediate danger, the fabric of the buildings is deteriorating rapidly. The National Museum of Computing receives no external funding, having been turned down for both National Lottery and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds.

PGP's campaign will be the latest in a number of attempts to stop the museum from falling apart. In July, a group of 97 senior scientists wrote to The Times newspaper to highlight the plight of the museum.

Tom Espiner of ZDNet UK reported from London. Colin Barker of ZDNet UK contributed to this article..

[john42]

Without doubt, the code-breaking work at Bletchley Park shortened the war, thus saving countless Allied lives. That fact alone makes it bizarre that the UK government is not unstintingly funding the site?s restoration as an important historic monument.

In weighing up whether to support the Bletchley Park appeal, Americans may care to reflect that by the end of World War Two, the Nazis had developed a long-range heavy bomber, the Junkers 390, which first flew in October, 1943. There is dispute among historians over whether the bomber actually made a Transatlantic test flight, as has been claimed, to within 10 miles of New York, but the bomber was certainly capable of such a flight.

Initially, 26 bombers were ordered, but the Nazis ran out of time and materials. Had the war continued, it is most likely that American cities would have been attacked. This appeal is well worth supporting.

John Williams, Barcelona
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