Which computer museum to visit?

I’m visiting England (London) in a couple of weeks because of work and will have the Saturday to myself. I thought it could be a good idea to visit either the computer museum at Bletchley Park or “The Centre for Computing History” in Cambridge but I can’t really make up my mind which one I should visit and I doubt I’ll manage both.

Both Colossus and EDSAC are a good argument for Bletchley but visiting Cambridge does feel a little like visiting hallowed grounds on its own :) I guess the Cambrige museum is more relevant for an old BBC/RISC OS user but I would love to get some thoughts from people that have been to both :)

(Sorry, this should probably be in General)

Good evening!

I have been to both and am a volunteer at the Centre for Computing History, as of a couple of weeks ago. I’ve started (actually re-started) the huge task of cataloguing all their Acorn 32-bit hardware and software.

In answer to your question, it’s a tricky decision! The Centre for Computing History is a very engaging place and has a lot of interactive exhibits. There are lots of working consoles, some arcade games, lots of interesting hardware (much of it working), not to mention (a huge recent project) James Newman’s Megaprocessor. The Acorn computers are well represented although you may be disappointed at the moment if you’re after a well set up RISC OS machine. That’s something I’m currently working on. It is very well worth a visit, however if you’re after RISC OS stuff and are likely to be back in a year or two then you might be better off at Bletchley this time.

Bletchley certainly is also hallowed ground, and it you’ll not see a more interesting place to learn about the very early computing days. My other half and I spent a day there and saw a lot less than half of it.

Either way, you’ll have a great time. Enjoy!

Thanks Simon, Bletchley will likely be the choice this time around then and save Cambridge for the next trip in a year or two!

One thing to note is that Bletchley Park and The National Museum Of Computing are two separate entities, that just happen to be on the same site! To see it all you will need to buy two tickets :-(

TNMOC is bigger than CfCH, but CfCH is much more interactive – they’re happy for you to play with almost everything!

And if you’re in London on Monday 19th Feb, then drop in on the next ROUGOL meeting :-)

I rather expected it to be two separate tickets so that won’t be an issue.

Unfortunately I’m flying back to Sweden on the Sunday, otherwise I would definitely have dropped in!

Thanks Bryan!