We use the painless travel agency of Google Maps to explore the history of technology — from the University of Helsinki to Albuquerque — and some of the things that have happened to the places that helped create the modern world.
Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes — digital computing
A place etched on the heart of every true blue British technologist, Bletchley Park symbolises what can be done through sheer power of thought when the pressure's on. Historians will argue forever how many lives were saved by the wholesale breaking of the German war codes and whether Colossus was the first digital programmable electronic computer, but what's beyond doubt is the tragedy of what happened afterwards. The core of what would, in other hands, become the world's most important new industry was deliberately destroyed and those involved sworn to silence — all to protect secrets that would be compromised anyway.
Real-life visiting potential: 10/10. The site museum is excellent.
Talkback
We're a select breed!
Born at the end of the second world war into a world of valves ("vacuum tubes" for the linguistically lattitudinally challenged) we've been privileged to live through the birth and the first sixty years of the "semiconductor era" which has not only been the engine behind the "technological revolution" but has also changed the face of humanity irrevocably.
We've seen the point-contact diode and all the spin-off diodes (Zener, Shockley, Tunnel, Gunn, LED, Photo, Varicap, SCR, Hall effect, etc.) the junction transistor and it's spin-offs (unijunction, Darlington, field effect, MOSFET, etc.) develop into today's analogue and digital integrated circuits of mind-numbing complexity.
For those of us who made technology of our life, in whatever speciality, it's been a roller-coaster of a ride, we've had to hang on by our fingertips and had to run like crazy just to stand still... but it's been thrilling, breathtaking, breakneck and as exciting and as full of possibilities as a new-born baby... and it's only "just" starting!
sorry, but you can't mention xerox parc and microsoft without putting in 1, Infinite Loop. After all - it's because of that company that we are now using computers to read this site!