The Computer Conservation Society organised a three day conference in July, to celebrate the British contribution to the development of modern computing and to mark the 50th year of the British Computer Society.

The first day (July 12th) was at Bletchley Park – with talks and practical demonstrations from experts on the two key wartime developments – the Bombe and the Colossus. Both these deserve wider recognition – much of the history has been hidden by secrecy until recently and the outcome of WW2 would have been different without these.

A fully operational Bombe has been rebuilt by a team of volunteers, led by John Harper (ex ICL) - a magnificent achievement of real engineering to make this large machine which was used to `crack’ the coding of messages encrypted by Enigma machines. Around 200 Bombe machines were made by one of the companies that that formed ICT (BTM) at Letchworth using technology from punched card equipment. The rebuilt machine has now been commissioned and is operational – you can see it at Bletchley Park.

The Colossus has also been rebuilt – a later wartime system using electronic valves which was used to `crack’ the coding of encrypted teleprinter messages. Another magnificent achievement to rebuild this system which was the precursor of computers as we know today.

You can see these systems working, and more about what they achieved at the Bletchley Park Museum – for more details and about visiting click here.

The new UK `National Museum of Computing’ was also shown – the project is described in a recent BBC news item. ICL pensioners may be interested in supporting the development of this national museum – for more information click here.

The following 2 days (July 13th and 14th) were at the BCS meeting rooms in London – with several ICL people participating – items included:

- Roger Johnson on the HEC and 1300 series of BTM computers and their widespread use in UK business
- John Aris on pioneering business applications and software on Leo
- Ian Barron on parallel processing – including the innovative ICL DAP system
- Peter Hall on the early growth in making computers as a business – the people and the challenges for the companies up to 1961
- George Felton on early system software

This was an opportunity to hear and join in discussion with many of the people who took part in the early stages of the UK computer industry. Some photos of people at the event have been published in the members area – to view log in to the Members Area and look for the item on the members noticeboard.