Google donates half a million quid to Bletchley Park

INTERNET SEARCH FIRM Google has kicked £550,000 into the Bletchley Park restoration fund, which will go to improve the historical, world class code breaking facility.

The firm has already lent the weight of its bank balance to Bletchley Park, when it was looking to keep some of Alan Turing's papers, and now Google has donated a decent chunk of the £15m it needs to begin the important work.

"The Bletchley Park Trust has been doing great work to honour Alan Turing and the codebreakers who helped shorten the second world war and to educate the next generation about the history of modern computing," said Peter Barron, director of external relations at Google. "We are delighted to make this charitable donation to help support the next phase of this important project."

Once it is raised, the money will be used to develop the site into an educational facility and a celebration of the work done there. Plans include the changing of disused huts into a visitor centre, as well as the conservation of others.

"We are tremendously grateful to Google for bringing us considerably closer to achieving our development aims. We have received other generous contributions towards the project but this is the largest single element of the partnership funding and absolutely vital in potentially getting the project underway much sooner than might otherwise have been the case," added Simon Greenish, CEO of the Bletchley Park Trust.

"It would be wonderful if other donors follow Google's example to help preserve our computing heritage. We could then proceed as soon as possible with restoration of the profoundly historically significant codebreaking huts." µ