The Bombe Rebuild is now working

The Bombe Rebuild at Bletchley Park is now capable of reliably repeating 
real jobs as originally carried out in W.W.II.

An 'official' 'Switch On' took place by His Royal Highness the Duke of 
Kent the day before yesterday. The British Computer Society has been a 
major sponsor of the Project as has been the Bletchley Park Trust. Many 
local dignitaries were in attendance plus many senior members of the 
BCS. Also Bletchley Park management and Trustees were well represented.

His Royal Highness is patron of both the British Computer Society and 
the Bletchley Park Trust so this was most appropriate.

Important to our team was that almost 50 of those who contributed in 
some way or another were also invited.

In addition last Thursday was the first day of a conference to mark the 
50th anniversary of the BCS. This was held at BP and our machine 
performed for the whole afternoon. Obviously we were all a little 
anxious that the Bombe should not go wrong during either of these 
events. We were all relieved when it never even missed a beat. However 
there were a couple of incidents but these were quickly traced to 
'operator error' and not visible to the visitors.

In addition we have our Checking Machine working and part of an overall 
demonstration. We have also modified a BP owned Typex machine to act as 
an Enigma machine in the same manner as was done at BP for use in the 
Decode Room.

We are now in a much larger area at BP with many displays for people to 
read.

We are going to 'catch our breath' for the next month or so and then 
consider how we might put together more regular demonstrations but 
meantime the displays and the machine just there to see in its finished 
state are well worth a visit.

I am now in the process of updating our WEB site which is almost 4 years 
out of date. I will let this forum know when it is up and running.
-- 
John Harper
Bombe Rebuild Project Manager