[netaustin]

We spent a whole gray day at Bletchley and TNMOC and I appreciated the connection between Bletchley and TNMOC given the context of WWII. To me Bletchley is more about process, a metaphorical "Scrum room" of one of the most important math and science programs in history. And taken together, they encapsulate sort of a catalyzing moment that computing prehistory transitioned to computing history.

My history-teacher wife liked Bletchley a lot more than TNMOC, where I lingered too long, but I did like both. Even though the Bombe replica was down for repairs that day.

[tialaramex]

Definitely if your interest is World War II, or the Intelligence process, the human side, any of that - the Bletchley Park exhibits are key and TNMOC is at most a side visit, whereas if your interest is computing, TNMOC is key and there's no reason to do more than pencil in the rest of the Bletchley Park site as a possible extra.

I don't know about Science. There's a lot of math and logic puzzle solving at Bletchley, but the other crash projects of WWII have a lot more science, Los Alamos obviously, translating from "In principle nuclear fission is a more powerful bomb than anything previously made" to an actual weapon you can use to destroy a Japanese city. But also the invention of the Cavity Magnetron - a little box can make enough radio waves to make a radar for your night fighter so you can figure out where the enemy planes are relative to you - or it can use those waves to heat a delicious baked potato in a few minutes...

[currymj]

it does seem like working on the Bombe got Alan Turing really deep into thinking about hardware. he'd previously played around with building some logic circuits but seems like he didn't go deep into it before Bletchley, before that he was mostly a very pure mathematician.

[Yeul]

The code breaking was more important to WW2 than Los Alamos which simply came too late to be of any effect.

The nuclear bomb was more of a backup plan for if the Germans actually managed to defeat Stalin.