A Visit to Bletchley Park

The National Museum of Computing, located at Bletchley Park, is an independent charity housing the largest collection of functional historic computers in Europe, including a 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 to the rise of personal computing in the 1980s and beyond.

Funders of the museum include Bletchley Park Capital Partners, CreateOnline, Ceravision, InsightSoftware.com, Google UK, PGP Corporation, IBM, NPL, HP Labs, BCS, the Drapers' Foundation, Black Marble, and the School of Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire.

The museum is currently open to the public on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays from 1pm and on summer Bank Holidays. Guided tours are also available at 2.30pm on Tuesdays. There are often additional opening times for the public; see the website or the iPhone app for updates. Educational and corporate groups are very welcome and may be on any day or evening by prior arrangement.

For more information, see www.tnmoc.org (link is external) and follow @tnmoc on Twitter and The National Museum of Computing on Facebook and Google+. A TNMOC iPhone App is also now available from the iPhone App Store.

Lotus Update - Combustion Conundrum

Readers with long memories will be aware that Onega is the owner of a 1969 Lotus Europa Series 2 Car, which is currently up with Banks Service Station (Europa Services) under Richard Winter.

2015 will hopefully be the year that the car returns to the road. When it went up to Banks some years ago, it was in a fairly sorry state - being original and much loved over the years, but also in less than perfect condition. Okay, in quite a poor state all-round.

The original intention was to make the repairs needed to the bodywork, renew the sub frame and to replace the engine, which was strong but thirsty with a Fiat 1.2 Diesel Turbo engine from a donor vehicle. The reasoning behind this was that it would make the car reliable (not that the original Renault engine was any trouble) and economical as well as reducing performance to a level that should be still be fun but also reasonably non life threatening.

At the time of writing, which is January 2015, I've had a good catch up chat with Richard this week and we have a joint resolution to get the project through and completed. Things have changed over the time since Onega acquired the vehicle and classic car values are on the increase which means we have to revisit the originally intended path of the diesel conversion.

The diesel engine is a transverse unit (fits across the body), whereas the original engines in the cars were longitudinal (engine at 90 degrees with the body and in line with the central shaft of the sub frame). Thus to fit the diesel engine in, a number of modifications to the frame are needed and possibly the bodywork also. These would likely need to be quite substantial changes which would inevitably detract from the originality of the car.

We are less worried about originality and purity of the vehicle, but it does seem sensible to maintain a good degree of originality if it agrees with logic; although we're committed to features like modern brakes which have improved substantially over time.

For anyone that is not familiar with them, the Lotus Europa was an early mid engine sports car (the third mid engine car design in the world after the Lamborghini Miura and the Ford GT40). Our car, UNG 135G was one of the original white UK launch cars from when these were introduced into the UK in 1969 - the Series 1 having been export only.  

So now we have to make a choice on what engine to put in the car; this is a fairly key decision as it dictates the course of the rest of the work to be done.

The main choices are:

1. Keep the original Renault engine - This would be ideal for originality and it sounded good & ran well but averaged about 20 something mpg; which was the main reason for considering the diesel option as we want to make good use of the car.

2. Go for the diesel engine as originally envisioned, with the changes to bodywork etc. that might be needed. The chances are that this would cause us to need to also swap out items like the Smith's instruments on the dash and other original features we rather like that add to the ambience and spirit of the car.

3. Consider a Vauxhall 1600 engine - This would work with the original sub frame, give performance of approx. 0-60 in 4.5 seconds and about 170Mph tops we gather, as well as 30 something MPG. The performance here is more than we need, but this could be restricted a little if needs be.

4. Think of something else - Electric, hybrid, hydrogen, a longitudinal diesel perhaps?

Choices, choices... but something important to consider.

Our criteria are:

  • Operational efficiency (MPG or equivalent)
  • Reliability - ideally this power plant will have a good long life in service.
  • Engineering compatibility with the car body (i.e. engine has to fit, made to turn the wheels and work).
  • Cost - we have to be able to afford the engine and the fitting in the first place.
  • Forthcoming changes to London ultra low emissions zone and congestion charging zone requirements and pricing.

Right now we are doing some quick research into the options. One benefit of the Europa is that it is of lightweight construction; Colin Chapman's mantra and design philosophy was to 'simplify and add lightness' and this benefits us being around 650Kg, which compares for example with the Telsa Model S at 2,108 Kg and power to weight ratios make for big performance differences (or correspondingly lower power requirements). The Tesla does have a lower drag coefficient than the Europa at 0.24 vs 0.3, but the Lotus is now 46 years old and much slippier than most modern cars still. Actually a single Tesla motor might be a nice solution if the good folks at Tesla have one to spare :-) .

We hope to have a decision as to direction within a couple of weeks in this matter and in the meantime are looking at the other elements of work needed, such as re-chroming where needed etc.

Watch this space - photos and updates will follow..

Be Strong, Stay Strong.

'Those that cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it' - Paraphrased from George Santayana (1863 - 1952).

This is sometimes attributed to Winston Churchill, who had many wise words to say about many subjects. One of his related statements is at the bottom of this post for reinforcement of the point.

As with New Year's resolutions, everything starts off with good intentions; what happens after this makes the difference.

With IT, this is the same and experience has reminded me of this recently in no small way.

In life, do you prefer:
a) The gym (or your choice of exercise)?
b) The doctors (and not your choice of illness)?

Equally, do you like to:                                                                                                                                    a) Maintain and service your car to keep it in good order (or take it to the garage to do this for you)?                                                                                                                                                              b) Wait until something breaks then fix it?

Hopefully the answer to both questions is A - put in the effort and enjoy the reward. This is not always possible and this can be and needs to be understood if the alternative of managed decay is selected. If you don't maintain yourself or your car (there are many other examples but, hopefully these are easy to relate to), then you increase the risk of unexpected break down. Fixes are usually possible (in both example cases sometimes things are not and terminal), but you suffer inconvenience at least and delay, cost and suffering at worst.

An example of managed decay would be if you have a car that you enjoy but is not essential for travel, such as in a city where many options exist. You may not have the means to maintain the car in optimum order, or otherwise choose not to and accept that if the car fails as a result, you are inconvenienced but find the risk or cost-benefit acceptable (if you have a choice).

Now we must relate these general points to more specific IT issues which are in our professional remit and focus here at Onega and relating to client systems. 

Churchill's statement from the House of Commons records, on 2nd May 1935 related to the outcome of a conference between the UK, France and Italy on the subject of preserving Austria's independence was:

“When the situation was manageable it was neglected and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong – these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.”