Year 9 enjoyed a fascinating school trip to the National Museum of Computing, where they saw machines from the 1940’s to the 1990’s during their visit to Bletchley Park. The trip also included an interactive experience on 1980 computers, where the winners were awarded house points.
Our students learned how the estate was purchased by the British government in the 1930s for use as a code breaking centre by the intelligence service. At first thousands of people worked with pen and paper to decipher German messages, until Tommy Flowers designed the Colossus which did the work in just 5 to 6 hours.
We gathered round the massive rebuilt Colossus, which historians believe shortened the war by 2 years. In addition, we also saw the world’s oldest working electronic computer, nicknamed “The Witch”, which was used to build power stations. The Museum took around three years to put the computer back together after it was broken up. Holly (9K) said her favourite part was learning about the work of “The Witch”.
Next on the agenda of our busy day was an interactive session on 1982 BBC micro-computers. Annabelle (also 9K) said she enjoyed this the most about the day. Before going on the terminals, Year 9 learned how before the days of the internet teenagers bought a magazine containing codes which they typed into their computer. If the codes were programmed in correctly the teenagers would go on to play a game, and our students were given 28 lines to programme. David (9K) won housepoints for being the first to finish the programming, and Mitchell (9K)won housepoints for scoring the best results during the actual game. Victoria (9B) won in both sections in her group, so achieved double housepoints.
Last but far from least was the visit to the Bletchley Park Museum. Ella (9K) said her favourite part of the day was seeing the German Enigma machine which the Allies were able to break. The students learned how that was only possible in such a complex system because the Germans made mistakes. Our trip finished with a brief look round the Museum, with many students taking photos of the statue of brilliant mathematician and cryptographer Alan Turing.
