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Editor's Blog: Time for 'listed' computers?
We must do more to protect our technology heritage

By Steve Ranger

Published: Thursday 20 March 2008

It's some old news that has me fascinated this week. Really old news. Ancient even.

silicon.com has been to visit Bletchley Park, home of the World War II codebreakers and Colossus - the world's first electronic codebreaking machine - which smashed the codes used by the German Enigma machine.

You can see some of the photos of Bletchley and the Colossus here and there's a fascinating video starring a rebuilt Colossus and the man who rebuilt it, which I'd also urge you to watch.

It's a fascinating story - that we built a computer so high-powered and so secret that after the war it had to be destroyed and the blueprints burnt in a furnace.

And yet it seems to me the effects of this post-war secrecy still linger on, so low is the general recognition of these pioneers.

It seems astonishing to me that this work is not recognised more widely. And even worse, that we are at constant risk of losing some of our technology heritage forever.

Too much of our computing history has already ended up in the dustbin or the skip, I fear, dumped when the shiny new model turned up.

What is junk one day may just a few years later be recognised as a vital link in the evolution of the technology infrastructure that now surrounds us. But sadly by then it is too late.

I for one would like to see much more funding made available to protect this heritage. Perhaps just as the listing of buildings has become a way of protecting the gems of our built environment I'd like to see the listing - for want of a better word - of the gems of computing that should not be forgotten.

The tech world is so often about chasing the newest innovation - but we forget our history at our peril.

Editor's choice - three things you must check out on silicon.com this week:

Another great piece of silicon.com video this week, looking at the cutting edge baggage systems at Heathrow Terminal 5. Alternatively, find out what BlackBerry's top exec in Europe thinks of the iPhone. And if that's not enough, here are some tips on stopping data leaks in our Data Lockdown special report.