Qualla: The National Museum of Computing https://qualla.com/the-national-museum-of-computing en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/r/the-national-museum-of-computing-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: The National Museum of Computing https://qualla.com/the-national-museum-of-computing The National Museum of Computing: Introduction https://qualla.com/the-national-museum-of-computing/ Photo credit Computid, CC BY 3.0. When the war ended in 1945, Winston Churchill ordered that all ten Colossus machines at Bletchley Park be broken into pieces no larger than a man's hand. The drawings were burned. The people who had built and operated them - the world's first programmable electronic computers - were told never to speak of what they had done. They did not speak, for thirty years. So when in 1993 a former MI5 scientist named Tony Sale started trying to rebuild a Colossus from scratch, he had to work from a handful of partial photographs, the memories of a few aging engineers, and engineering instinct. It took him fourteen years. The result, in Block H at Bletchley Park - the first purpose-built computer centre in the world - is now the heart of The National Museum of Computing.

Read more: The National Museum of Computing on Qualla

Image: Computid | CC BY 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/r/the-national-museum-of-computing-wp/gcpr-the-national-museum-of-computing-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full The National Museum of Computing: Block H https://qualla.com/the-national-museum-of-computing/ Photo credit TedColes, CC0. Block H was constructed in 1944 to house the production-line Colossus machines. It is therefore the oldest building in the world purpose-built for the operation of computers. By the late 1980s, with Bletchley Park abandoned and sliding into dereliction, the entire site was at ris...

Read more: The National Museum of Computing on Qualla

Image: TedColes | CC0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/r/the-national-museum-of-computing-wp/gcpr-the-national-museum-of-computing-block-h.mp3 0:06 2 full The National Museum of Computing: The Colossus Rebuild https://qualla.com/the-national-museum-of-computing/ Photo credit Ibonzer, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sale began in 1993 with eight black-and-white wartime photographs and a few sketches that had survived destruction. He gathered surplus thermionic valves from Britain's old telephone exchanges, hand-wound transformers, and rebuilt the entire panel of one hundred and ninety progra...

Read more: The National Museum of Computing on Qualla

Image: Ibonzer | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/r/the-national-museum-of-computing-wp/gcpr-the-national-museum-of-computing-the-colossus-rebuild.mp3 0:06 3 full The National Museum of Computing: The Witch https://qualla.com/the-national-museum-of-computing/ Photo credit BadgersCP, CC0. In another gallery sits the world's oldest original working digital computer. Its real name is the Harwell Dekatron, but it has been called the WITCH since 1957 - Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computation from Harwell. It first ran in 1951 at the Atomic Energy Research Es...

Read more: The National Museum of Computing on Qualla

Image: BadgersCP | CC0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/r/the-national-museum-of-computing-wp/gcpr-the-national-museum-of-computing-the-witch.mp3 0:06 4 full The National Museum of Computing: The Bombe Reborn https://qualla.com/the-national-museum-of-computing/ Photo credit Tmol42 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. In a third gallery is a fully working replica Turing-Welchman Bombe - the electromechanical machine Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman designed to break the German Enigma cipher. When the original wartime drawings were finally declassified in 1995, John Harper and a team of voluntee...

Read more: The National Museum of Computing on Qualla

Image: Tmol42 at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/r/the-national-museum-of-computing-wp/gcpr-the-national-museum-of-computing-the-bombe-reborn.mp3 0:06 5 full The National Museum of Computing: Everything That Came After https://qualla.com/the-national-museum-of-computing/ Photo credit BadgersCP, CC0. The museum is not only about the war. Successive galleries tell the story of British computing through the second half of the twentieth century: the EDSAC replica that contributed to three Nobel Prizes; the Marconi TAC that monitored Wylfa nuclear power station around the clock f...

Read more: The National Museum of Computing on Qualla

Image: BadgersCP | CC0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/r/the-national-museum-of-computing-wp/gcpr-the-national-museum-of-computing-everything-that-came-after.mp3 0:06 6 full