National Museum of Computing gallery opens at Bletchley Park

"Celebrating the British contribution to computing"

7 May 2009 16:46 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

A new interactive gallery has been opened by the The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park that contains the "key personal computers that have led the digital revolution in Britain".

With 50 personal computers dating from the 1960s to the present day the exhibit "tells the stories of the development of hardware and software, and the ongoing miniaturisation of computing devices".

The interactive element comes in with the fact that the machines are displayed "surrounded by reminders of the world events and social context of their time", which doesn't sound too annoying.

The earliest model on display is a PDP8 from the USA dating from 1965, while there's also working models of the BBC B micro, the Dragon 32, the Sinclair ZX80 and the Amstrad PC1512.

Kevin Murrell, a director and trustee of TNMOC, said: "We have been keen to celebrate the British contribution to computing. In America, the development of personal computing is often seen as a battle between IBM and Apple".

"But in Britain the story was quite different, with many small entrepreneurial companies breaking new ground in the late 1970s and early 1980s".

The museum is currently open on Thursdays and Saturdays from 1pm, with the new gallery partly funded by PGP Corporation, IBM and Hewlett Packard.