by Sue Black
After the war, Flowers returned to the GPO and did research that led to the creation of modern day electronic telephone exchanges. He was also involved in creating ERNIE, the Post Office computer that randomly chose the winners in the monthly Premium Bonds draw. For his work during the war, he received an MBE and a paltry £1,000 award which didn’t even cover the personal costs he’d accrued in building the first Colossus. As it was, he shared the money with the people who’d helped him build it. Somewhat ironically, he was then refused a bank loan to build another machine like Colossus because the bank didn’t believe that such a machine could work. And, of course, he couldn’t offer proof of concept as, just like everyone else at Station X, he could not talk about what he’d done during the war.
Tommy Flowers died in 1998, but not before his achievements were finally recognised, unlike so many BP veterans who passed away before their stories became known. What he built was, in effect, the first recognisable ancestor of all modern programmable computers. In time, the valves became transistors and the transistors became microchips but the basic concept has remained fairly constant, based on Turing’s logic and Flowers’ engineering.
There’s a charming story about Flowers that appeared on the BBC’s Timewatch series in 2013 during a programme about the codebreakers’ work. In 1993, he attended a basic IT course at a college in Hendon, North London, and was presented with a certificate to prove it. He would have been 88 years old at the time.
None of his fellow students would have had an inkling that the gentle old man sitting with them in their classroom was the man who’d made modern computing possible.
19
Talk at BCS Wiltshire
I was now being invited to give talks not just around the UK but also overseas. Several BCS branches invited me to talk about Bletchley Park and the campaign that I had started. I had been campaigning for two years. Sometimes that made me unhappy; I got upset that the world, and particularly the UK Government and technology industry, had not come forward to completely sort out Bletchley Park’s financial problems. I and now many others were putting a lot of time, effort and love into raising awareness of Bletchley Park’s importance and rightful place as a key heritage site, promoting it as the “Geek Mecca”. Why did everyone not feel the same way? But it was important to stay positive – things were moving along now and support was clearly increasing.
In June 2010 I gave a talk to the BCS Wiltshire branch in Swindon about my campaign. I always really enjoy giving talks to groups of people that I know will be supportive of the cause, and for a self confessed geek, a geek audience is ideal. The very knowledgeable Nick Miers from Bletchley Park, who knows all about Enigma and the Enigma machine had also been invited to speak. People had travelled from all over, including Pat Galea, who had been one our most active campaigners. Pat also has the most wicked sense of humour so is always a pleasure to interact with on Twitter. I got the train down to Swindon from London and arrived just before the start of the talk. The BCS Swindon Chair met me and introduced me to other members of the branch. What a lovely group of people they were!
I started my talk by describing my first visit to Bletchley Park in 2003. I couldn’t believe that it had already been seven years. I then described my subsequent trip in 2008, the Women of Station X oral history project, and being interviewed by Rory Cellan-Jones for the BBC News. The story of the campaign was really the story of my life for the past few years; it was building into quite a long talk.
But then as soon as I had started, it seemed, it was over. The audience had some great questions about Turing, social media campaigning, the actual number of people that had worked there and the current financial situation at Bletchley. It was wonderful to feel the warmth that people who knew and understood the massive contribution made by those that had worked at Bletchley Park felt for the site.
Stay on the scene
Not long after my talk at BCS Wiltshire I gave another talk at OpenTech, which I’d spoken at the previous year. OpenTech is held on a Saturday in June every year. It’s a great chance to catch up with the latest thinking in the alternative tech scene. To me the phrase “tech scene” used to conjure up images of middle-aged middle managers in suits doing deals with each other and then going down the pub. OpenTech is absolutely nothing like that. The speakers at OpenTech are free thinkers with innovative and sometimes radical ideas. They are also, in my experience, people who both understand tech and want to make the world a better place – people like Bill Thompson, Jamillah Knowles and Chris Vallance from the BBC. At OpenTech 2010 I was on a panel about women in tech with Suw Charman Anderson, Zoe Margolis and Janet Robinson. Later on I gave a talk about Bletchley Park and asked the audience to help in whatever way they could.
What you can do . . .
Visit Bletchley Park, the “Geek Mecca” (only £10 for an annual pass)
Have a look around the Bletchley Park website: www.bletchleypark.org.uk
Pledge 1 days wages: http://www.pledgebank.com/work4bletchley
Read all about my campaign: savingbletchleypark.org
Donate money: www.justgiving.com/sueblack
Watch the BCS Women of Station X video
Follow @bletchleypark and @Dr_Black on Twitter, search term #bpark
Check out the Bletchley Park annual reunion site:
www.bletchleyparkreunion.info
Attend the Station X social media cafes, details can be found by following @StationX on Twitter
Talk to everyone you know about Bletchley Park. Have they been there? Do they know how important it was/is?
Bill Thompson, me and Cory Doctorow at OpenTech I had great conversations that night with the BBC’s Bill Thompson, who had always been very supportive of Bletchley Park, and Cory Doctorow, who I had not met before. I spoke to Cory about how Bletchley could improve what they do in order to get more people interested, visiting the site and spreading the word. He said that he thought ecommerce was a massive opportunity for Bletchley and that geeks all over the world would love to buy merchandise of all sorts that came from Bletchley, but that frankly, at the moment, their merchandise was “all a bit shit”.
After a bit of consideration, I unfortunately had to agree.
My first thought was that this was a trite point. To me it didn’t really get to the heart of the matter. It was important to me that people realised the weight of the fundamental contributions that Bletchley had made to society both in terms of shortening the war and by serving as the birthplace of the computer. But, as I spoke to Cory, I suddenly realised that we didn’t need everyone to think about Bletchley Park in the same way that I did. We weren’t all the same. Some people might never fully understand the implications of what had happened at Bletchley – but they might still be willing to part with some cash to own something with Bletchley Park branding. It was important to reach this market as well. Having come from an academic background, I wasn’t the most clued-up about marketing and branding, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.
I left OpenTech happy that the geek community knew about and were interested in Bletchley Park, and grateful for their ideas and support.
Papers, please
In 2006 I’d applied and been accepted for a Crucible Fellowship through the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA). The whole experience made me love NESTA, so I remained on the NESTA mailing list in the years that followed and quite often attended events there. In November 2010 I noticed they were holding an event as part of the Silicon Valley comes to the UK (or SVC2UK) programme. It sounded interesting, so I signed up and went along.
I was particularly happy to see that there was a female Google vice president, Megan Smith, speaking. She made some good points in her talk and I was glad that I had gone along to the event – it would have been worth it just to hear from her.
At the end of the event I went to get a drink and chat
to a couple of friends. One of them was Karen Barber, who I’d met previously at Tuttle club – she was one of the people who had realised the potential of Twitter and social media before most other people had even heard of it. We spoke about the event and we were catching up on how everything was going in general. Of course the conversation turned to Bletchley Park and how the campaign was going. I told Karen that some of Alan Turing’s papers had come up for auction at Christie’s and that a journalist called Gareth Halfacree had set up a JustGiving account to try to raise the money to buy the papers for Bletchley Park. I wanted to help. The papers were up for auction for £300,000, and even though Bletchley didn’t have that sort of money, I couldn’t imagine a better place for them to be. Gareth had raised over £10,000 very quickly, but the auction was the following week and I couldn’t see how he would make it to £300,000 in that time.
I remarked to Karen that I would really like to ask the Google VP who’d just spoken if perhaps Google could help with buying the Turing papers, but I was scared. Even through I was used to asking people to help Bletchley Park, I wasn’t used to approaching top-ranking US Google executives and asking them for large sums of money! I desperately wanted to talk to her, but I was completely in awe and suddenly felt very shy.
Luckily, Karen persuaded me to go and speak to Megan. I gathered up my courage, approached Megan, and started up a conversation. Megan hadn’t heard of Bletchley Park or Alan Turing, but when I started telling her more about them she seemed interested. I then asked her if Google would be interested in helping Bletchley Park to buy the Turing papers. She said that she would like more details and asked me to send her an email outlining what I was asking for with appropriate links so that she could check it out. After thanking her, I walked back to Karen to tell her what Megan had said. Although the conversation seemed to go well, I wasn’t totally convinced that Megan had been genuinely interested – perhaps she was just being polite. After approaching hundreds of people over the last few years I had got very used to people asking me to send them an email, and then sending them an email only to never hear from them again. But, I was proud of myself: I’d asked a Google VP for help. It couldn’t hurt to try – this was becoming my constant refrain for the campaign. That night I put together an email to Megan about Bletchley Park, Turing’s papers and the auction I and sent it through.
I’m feeling lucky
The next day I got a direct message from someone at Google who was following me on Twitter. His name was Simon Meacham. Simon said that he had been meaning to get in touch with me for ages to offer to help with the campaign to save Bletchley Park but had been a bit busy. He was a Brit who had lived in the US for a long time, but he was was currently based in London at Google’s offices in Victoria. We had a direct message conversation via Twitter during which I told him that I had met Megan Smith the day before. I told him about the Turing papers, the auction at Christie’s and that I had sent Megan an email telling her all about the situation. Simon told me to send him the same email, and he would see what he could do. I felt excited – maybe Google would help out after all!
The next day I heard from Simon again. He had been in touch with Megan. He had also been in touch with the head of the UK office and he was really hoping that Google might be able to help.
Subject:Google
From: Simon Meacham
To: Dr Sue Black
Sent: 18 November 2010
I have communications under way with Matt Britten (UK Country Manager for Google) and Megan Smith. Will keep you posted.
Best –
Simon
Meanwhile we were getting closer to the day of the auction. It was now Thursday evening and the auction was being held on the following Tuesday in London. Simon and I exchanged mobile numbers and many phone calls as he kept me updated on how things were progressing. I remember being in a car park on the Saturday taking a very excited call from Simon. He was calling to tell me that the Google UK office had approved some funding to help Bletchley Park buy the Turing papers. I was astounded. This might actually happen, I remember thinking. Incredible.
The next thing Simon needed to do was to get the funding amount approved by the main Google board in the US over the weekend. I had no idea how hard or easy that was going to be. Simon said that on a regular weekend, it might be fine, but this weekend was Thanksgiving, so chances were it might not happen. The Google board needed to convene an extraordinary meeting to approve the funds on Thanksgiving weekend. Simon said that he was really hoping that it would happen and that the funding request would go through, but this was probably the worst weekend of the year to try to make it happen.
I was desperately hoping that it might work out, but also trying not to get my hopes up too high as it seemed that time and public holidays were against us.
I spent Sunday wondering how things were progressing, hoping that the Google board were meeting to give the go ahead, and then thinking, but why would they? I was obviously very caught up in what was happening with the Turing papers, but how much did the Google board know or care about Bletchley and Turing? I went to bed Sunday night thinking that it probably wasn’t going to happen.
On Monday morning my mobile rang. It was Simon.
“Hello Sue, good news! We got the money! The board met and they have approved $100,000 to go to Bletchley Park to put forward for the purchase of the Turing papers.”
“Oh my God! Simon, that’s amazing! I can’t believe it, thank you SO much.”
It was incredible news. $100,000 from Google towards the purchase was a substantial amount of money. I couldn’t believe that the board had met up on Thanksgiving to make sure that it happened.
I phoned Kelsey at Bletchley Park. She was so surprised by the news that she thought it might be a scam. I persuaded her that it wasn’t. We were one step closer to securing the papers.
Subject: $100,000 Grant Approval for the purchase of the Alan Turing papers
From: Simon Meacham
To: Dr Sue Black
Sent: 22 November 2010
Bletchley Park Trust
Attention: Sue Black
The Mansion
Bletchley Park
Milton Keynes
MK3 6EB
Dear Sue,
I am pleased to inform you that we’ve completed our review of your proposal and will recommend funding by the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund of Tides Foundation to the Bletchley Park Trust in the amount of $100,000 USD, as well as the use of our name, in order to support the purchase of the Alan Turing papers at auction (Christie’s Lot 60 Sale 7882). This is a one (1) time grant. If for whatever reason you are unable to purchase the lot referenced above, Google will not recommend the grant to Bletchley Park Trust.
Your query returned 100,000 results
That day I wrote a blog post called “Bletchley Park needs you!”, telling everyone what had happened and asking them to help make up the shortfall in funding between the amount that Bletchley Park now had and the amount that was needed to purchase the papers.
I had a chat with Gareth, who had started the JustGiving account; he said that there was now £18,000 from the public to help Bletchley buy the papers. So Bletchley had approximately £18,000 + $100,000. This was fabulous, but still nothing like the £300,000 needed to buy the papers. Both Gareth and I phoned Christie’s to ask them if anything could be done to somehow help Bletchley in this situation. Christie’s told us:
“At this late stage, Christie’s would only consider withdrawing the lot from sale if the appeal were to make a serious offer. This would have to be at the high estimate, £500,000, and any offer made would be subject to Christie’s buyer’s premium (25% of the bid price up to and including £25,000 and 20% of the excess of the hammer price up to £500,000)."
I wasn’t impressed with their response. I suppose looking back on the situation now, what else did I expect Christie’s to do? They are in the auction busine
ss to make money. But at the time I thought their statement was absolutely outrageous. I ended my blog post thus:
Hmmm . . . thanks very much Christie’s.
So, over to you . . . can you help? We have until 2pm tomorrow to raise the money to save Turing’s papers so that they can be housed at Bletchley Park where they belong. I can’t bear to think of them being taken overseas and held in a private collection. Can you?
Please help Bletchley Park to buy these papers, to keep them where they belong, in the UK, at Bletchley Park, where we can all go and see them any time we want. Where Newman and Turing worked side by side, day after day, helping to save millions of lives.
We owe it to them, don’t we?
My blog post was linked to and quoted widely in the press and tweeted and retweeted on Twitter. I had a huge number of views on my blog that day, second only to the time a couple of years before when Stephen Fry had tweeted a link to my blog and caused me to get eight thousand hits. This time it was around five thousand. Incredible. There was obviously a lot of support for what we were trying to do. But would Bletchley actually get the Turing papers? All would be revealed at the auction the next day . . .
That’s a lot, we’ll give it a shot
The day had finally arrived. The auction began at 2pm at Christie’s auction rooms in Mayfair, London. I had never been to an auction before, so I was very excited to see what it was actually like.
Once I’d got to Christie’s and found the auction room, I went over and sat down next to BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones at the front of the room. What really struck me was how fast everything moved and how much money was changing hands. I guess that is to be expected, but it wasn’t until I was sitting right in the middle of it all that I really understood how exciting – and nerve-racking – it could be. There were lots of people standing at the front and side of the room on their mobile phones and at laptops bidding on the lots that were coming up. I felt a bit like I’d walked on to a film set.