Google backs Bletchley Park restoration project - Telegraph.co.uk

Tunny's relays crackle like a lightning strike every time it decodes a letter but Colossus, in the next room, whirrs serenely and clacks every time the join on a huge loop of paper tape goes through the reader heads.

As we tour the machines, gazing with awe at the banks of circuits and switches, the man next to me, Patrick Beautement, says that his mother was one of the thousands of women who worked in these huts. He said 'In a letter she sent me before she died she mentioned her work. I don't remember all that much about it, she said, it was terribly boring. The way they kept everyone separate, so even just mentioning a name got you terrible black looks from your colleagues, made it all so difficult to recall.'

Dr Sue Black, a computer science academic at UCL and one of Bletchley's chief evangelists, says she was far from alone. She said: 'More than 10,000 people worked here and half of them were women. Someone tweeted to me the other day an article showing that when programming started it was 50/50 men and women and it's just got worse, which is crazy. It should be getting better, not worse.

'Today's a celebration of Bletchley Park in all its wonderfulness, and a Google-hosted garden party with perfect garden party weather. It's also specifically a fundraising day for Block C [originally home of the huge punch-card index that cross-referenced information gained from the decryptions, and now a boarded-up hulk visible at the gate to the complex]. Google loves Bletchley Park and Bletchley Park loves Google.'

The work done by Turing, Jean Valentine, Patrick Beautement's mother and their 10,000 colleagues has been estimated to have shortened the war by two years and saved more than 20 million lives. It also started a technological progression that has transformed the way the we all live and work, all from some brick huts in a small Buckinghamshire town. A slightly muddy garden party helped with the fundraising this week, but there's still a long way to go if Britain's place in computer history is to be fully assured.

• Bletchley Park is open to the public every day exfept Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day. You can donate online here.