front cover features silver buttons to represent an Enigma machine and the blue bird used to represent Twitter)
Saving Bletchley Park is a wonderful story of new technology being used to save the place of work of those who pioneered it. Dr Sue Black was inspired by the incredible group of people who worked at Bletchley Park during World War Two. As she notes, it is calculated that their secret code-breaking work helped to shorten the war by two years. It is also seen as the birthplace of modern computing. Seeing its crumbling state, and realising just what could be lost, she took on the challenge of raising £10 million to save this unique place for future generations.
Dr. Black details the incredible ways in which she galvanised thousands of people to help to save Bletchley Park. She explains with great humour the set-backs she faced and the lessons learned over her campaign. From her initial petition to her highly effective use of Twitter, she explains how the public were mobilised over the course of her campaign and of how she built a community of supporters to raise the funds and save Bletchley.
Interspersed with the social media campaign, Dr. Black and Stevyn Colgan, tell us the story of the code breakers who worked at Bletchley. There is a real focus on the women who made up more than half of the staff there during World War Two and who the authors felt had been overlooked in other histories of Bletchley. As someone who works to support more women working in technology, Dr. Black shows real passion for these pioneers working alongside men in the new field of computing.
Fittingly, Dr. Black’s book became the fastest ever crowd-funded book in history.
You can find further details of Saving Bletchley Park on our Main Catalogue.