Bruce Sterling has given me permission to forward word of the Dead Media
Project and notices of the sort that follows to this list. The DMP is of
interest to this list because it focuses on identifying and documenting
obsolete media of all sorts and ages. For further information on the DMP,
please contact Bruce directly at [log in to unmask]

Cheers,
Sally Shelton
Director, Collections Care and Conservation

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|                                                                       |
|                 San Diego Natural History Museum                      |
|                          P. O. Box 1390                               |
|                San Diego, California   92112  USA                     |
|             phone (619) 232-3821; FAX (619) 232-0248                  |
|                     email [log in to unmask]                          |
|                                                                       |
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 08:43:40 -0500
From: Bruce Sterling <[log in to unmask]>
To: Dead Media List <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Dead Media Project Announcement


The British Computer Society and the National Museum of
Science and Industry

               THE COMPUTER CONSERVATION SOCIETY

      The COLOSSUS Code-Breaker and the Colossus Rebuild

                         Tony Sale
            Museums Director, Bletchley Park Trust

         A lecture on Thursday 31 October 1996, 2.0 pm

         Director's Suite, Science Museum, London SW7
                   (See directions below)

The Colossus code-breaking machine, designed and built
during World War II, played a vital role in deciphering
German High command message traffic.  This in turn made a
key contribution to frustrating enemy plans, and some
would say to the outcome of the war itself.

     Unhappily, successive post-war governments, sensitive
to the security implications of Britain's code-breaking
effort, have refused to release information about
Bletchley Park or Colossus. Winston Churchill is said to
have ordered that the 10 Colossus machines in operation at
the end of the war should be broken up into pieces no
larger than a man's hand. And it was to be 30 years after
the commissioning of Colossus in 1943 before there was any
official acknowledgement that the machine had ever
existed.

Colossus can be claimed as the World's first working
electronic computer, significantly predating the American
ENIAC. To rebuild it in the 1990s might be thought
impossible. Fortunately, Tony Sale, founder hon secretary
of the Computer Conservation Society and Museums Director
of the Bletchley Park Trust, saw things differently. He
started the rebuild project three years ago, and a working
replica of Colossus became operational at Bletchley Park
earlier this year. His lecture will trace how Colossus
came to be designed, the performance of the rebuilt
machine and the place of Colossus in the history of
computing.

For the Director's Suite, use the Museum North entrance
next to the old Post Office, a few yards north of the main
entrance in Exhibition Road.

Queries to:        Chris Hipwell 01825 722567

Please show this notice to obtain admission

http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/CCC/BPark/

(((bruces remarks -- A rare example of deliberately
assassinated and disappeared media -- you don't get much
deader than being annihilated by British Intelligence and
broken into pieces no bigger than a man's hand.
Incidentally, I have heard rumors that the rebuilt
Bletchley Park Colossus may (due to a flipped photo
negative) be a *reversed mirror image* of the original
Bletchley Park Colossi.)))