Through our education programme, festivals, lectures, demonstrations and visitor activities, we set past and emerging technologies in the context of our rapidly developing information age to inspire future generations of computer scientists, engineers and inventors.


The National Museum of Computing, located on Bletchley Park, is an independent charity housing the world's largest collection of functional historic computers, including the rebuilt Colossus, the world’s first electronic computer, and the WITCH, the world's oldest working digital computer. The museum enables visitors to follow the development of computing from the ultra-secret pioneering efforts of the 1940s through the large systems and mainframes of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and the rise of personal computing in the 1980s and beyond.

The museum runs a highly successful Learning Programme for schools and colleges and promotes introductions to computer coding amongst young people, especially females, to inspire the next generation of computer scientists and engineers.

The museum houses a rebuilt Colossus computer alongside an exhibition of the most complex code cracking activities performed at the Park, along with examples of machines continuing the history of the development of computing from the 1940s to the present day. The museum has a policy of having as many of the exhibits as possible in full working order.

Although located on the Bletchley Park 'campus', The National Museum of Computing is an entirely separate charity with its own fund raising and separate entrance/ticketing. TNMOC receives no public funding and relies on the generosity of donors and supporte

Tommy Flowers spent eleven months designing and building Colossus at the Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill, in North West London. After a functional test, Colossus Mk 1 was delivered to Bletchley Park in late December 1943 / January 1944, was assembled there by Harry Fensom and Don Horwood , and was working in early February 1944.

Colossus was the first of the electronic digital machines with programmability, albeit limited in modern terms. The notion of a computer as a general purpose machine - that is, as more than a calculator devoted to solving difficult but specific problems - would not become prominent for several years.

Colossus was preceded by several computers, many of them being a first in some category. Colossus, however, was the first that was digital, programmable, and electronic. The first fully programmable digital electronic computer capable of running a stored program was still some way off - the 1948 Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine.

The use to which the Colossi were put was of the highest secrecy, and Colossus itself was highly secret, and remained so for many years after the War. Colossus was not included in the history of computing hardware for decades, and Flowers and his associates were deprived of the recognition they were due for many years.

It has taken nearly fifteen years to rebuild the Mark II Colossus computer in the same position as Colossus 9 originally occupied in Block H. Using only scraps of diagrams, old pictures and half-forgotten memories Tony Sale and his team re-created this fantastic world-first for Britain and set the benchmark for computer conservation.

 The National museum of computing is a museum which is used to collecting and restoring historic computer systems. This museum is located in London more precisely in the Bletchley Park . This building has opened in 2007. In this museum they are exposed, the first electronic computers of the world. In this museum the visitors can be informed about the developpement of new digital computers. The museum encourage people especially women to become computer scientists and engineers through the Learning Programme. There is a lot of informatic societies who were the funders of this museum.