A group of our Year 12 Computer Science students were in their element exploring The National Museum of Computing this week.
Gus MacPherson, one of the students who went on the trip on Wednesday (February 28th), said: “Our trip to Bletchley Park was incredibly eye-opening. We got to see some of the world’s oldest computers in action, in a collection of devices through the years. The Bombe and Colossus were the two machines we saw from the Second World War, used to decrypt German ciphers. Being able to see the Colossus actively read its simply punched tape code, just as it would have during the war, was a great privilege and gave me a real sense of how far computing has come in such a short space of time.
“This was shown to an even higher degree as we were led through the extensive collection of computers from the 1960s to the present day. We were talked through the individual breakthroughs that rapidly changed how we use computers up until now, where computers which used to be the size of rooms are now much less powerful than our phones. The experience was incredibly engaging, and we were able to apply and expand upon our knowledge of content we have been learning back at school.”