'Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park,' says social network – but don't hold that against it
- Reference: 1602671351
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/10/14/facebook_bletchley_park/
- Source link:
The troubled site in England's Milton Keynes, home of the code breakers who worked to decrypt German messages during the Second World War, has fallen on hard times with revenues almost entirely drying up due to the coronavirus lockdown.
The lengthy closure, and restrictions required as part of its July reopening, led to a [1]warning from The Bletchley Park Trust that it expected to lose approximately £2m this year and was looking at 35 redundancies from its workforce.
Facebook is quite the fan of the work done at Bletchley Park, and a mural of scientist Alan Turning adorns a wall at the company's California headquarters. Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer [2]said : "Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park" – perhaps not the most ringing endorsement of the code breakers – before describing the antisocial network as "honored to be able to provide £1m of support" in order to keep the doors open.
Scientist, war hero and gay icon Alan Turing is new face of the £50 note [3]READ MORE
Being instrumental in defeating the Nazi threat while also instrumental in [4]the existence of Facebook ? Hmm.
Facebook [5]notched up $17.4bn in revenue for the three months ended 31 March 2020, an increase of 17 per cent on the previous year and at the time of writing [6]Forbes put the wealth of its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, at $100.4bn.
Facebook's largesse is aimed at supporting the work of the museum over the next two years and is joined by £447,000 from the UK government's Culture Recovery Fund.
The social media giant told us that the cash was in addition to a $1m grant for fact-checking organisations and other multimillion-dollar pots aimed at small businesses and the news industry, all of which are unlikely to put much of a dent in its revenues.
Iain Standen, CEO of Bletchley Park, [7]said : "With this significant support, we at Bletchley Park can weather the current crisis and survive into the future, keeping the doors open for future generations."
While we applaud the donation, one can't help but hope that a bit more of the cash sloshing around the tech world might find its way to other worthy causes as well being spanked on [8]multibillion-dollar acquisitions , share buybacks, or orbital ambitions due to [9]too much cash .
Cambridge's Centre for Computing History remains £10,000 shy of its modest £36,000 [10]fundraising target and recently found itself the victim of a burst water main a mere five days before reopening. 2020, eh?
While wringing hands over the centre's bad luck, a spokesperson told The Register : "The Facebook donation to Bletchley Park is fantastic. Some companies have seen huge increases in demand for their product during COVID, and it's great to see them recognise and support the work of cultural and heritage organisations that have seen very much the opposite.
"The Centre for Computing History is hopeful there is another tech giant with as big a heart as Facebook."
Meanwhile, [11]The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC), located in Block H on the Bletchley Park estate but a completely different entity to the trust, has managed to open its doors once again.
A spokesperson told us that it had managed to score £68,000 of funding from the Arts Council's Culture Recovery Fund, which, though welcome, "will help us through the winter but still leave us very short of funds by the Spring of 2021".
While paying tribute to the sterling efforts of its staff in securing donations to keep the lights on (although some way off the trust's good fortune), the spokesperson noted that reserves were being deleted, meaning that future development projects would be postponed.
Naturally, it would welcome some of those sweet, sweet social media pounds to keep its collection of functioning computers ticking over. The spokesperson added that TNMOC would be very happy if its landlord "were to share some of their good fortune with us in these perilous times".
In the meantime, for those who are inclined, you can make a donation or two to one or both museums (if going for that Friday pint is no longer an option) [12]here or [13]here . Both are irreplaceable cathedrals to IT nerdery. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://bletchleypark.org.uk/news/bletchley-park-trust-to-undergo-organisational-restructure
[2] https://about.fb.com/news/2020/10/bletchley-park-donation/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/15/bank_of_england_alan_turing_50_note/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/12/mark_zuckerberg_holocaust_facebook/
[5] https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2020/Facebook-Reports-First-Quarter-2020-Results/default.aspx
[6] https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/
[7] https://bletchleypark.org.uk/news/facebook-and-government-give-money-to-help-secure-future-of-bletchley-park-trust
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/12/twilio_segment/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/03/bezos_billions_space/
[10] https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/computermuseum
[11] https://www.tnmoc.org/
[12] https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/computermuseum
[13] https://www.tnmoc.org/make-a-donation
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park
The traffic analysis was done by [1]Gordon Welchman who also worked at Bletchley Park.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Welchman
Re: Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park
Arguably the US domination of IT (well, up to a point) would have been less likely without Bletchley park causing HMG to silence British computing technology as a commercial possibility.
Not something that was a problem for our American partners who were gifted the same technology by us...
A lot of whatifs but maybe it might have been FaceBook PLC otherwise, running on IBM hardware - thats Imperial Business Machines btw ;-)
Re: Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park
Absolutely true.
We would likely be under some Nazi dictatorship that kept files and records on all it's citizens. Tracked everything they did, everyone they contacted, everything they bought, even tried to analyse what their thoughts were. And held all those records forever.
We could never live our lives under a regime like that could we?
Re: Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park
Or maybe some hardware from Leo Computers, International Computers and Tabulators, British Tabulating Machine Company, Marconi, Ferranti, or Acorn?
Re: Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park
Not mention other countries going along the same ineluctable path of computing invention, like Germany's redoubtable Konrad Zuse.
.
Came across this British computing firm ( and makers ] the other day, from a very early period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Brothers_(computer_company)
Of course they changed their name [ from 1780 ! ] in order to drop out of history, and sold on a few times...
Re: Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park
The same thing happened with jet airplanes.
The Brits were actually ahead or on par with the Americans on many fronts after the war. But the Americans were much better at marketing and sales. It boils down to a fundamental difference in character. Europeans always look to the government for leadership, whereas Americans just say: "F*ck the government, we'll do it ourselves."
Because the social safety net is much smaller in the U.S. Americans have a real drive to make money anyway they can and see business opportunities everywhere. Not so in Europe, where governments and many left-wing political parties do their best to throw up obstacles to businesses.
Re: Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park
Pretty sure the American Jet industry sometimes relies on US Government subsidies.
Re: Re: Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park
*kaff* "Lockheed Martin Bribery Scandal" *kaff*
See also "Military Industrial Complex" Ref. "Eisenhower Farewell Address"
Re: Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park
And so did the British aviation industry. Remember the three V-bombers from three different manufacturers because the British government wanted to keep all thee companies in business? In the end this became untenable.
There's nothing illegal or immoral about U.S. subsidies to American airplane manufactures. The U.S. DoD wants a jet airplane and pays American companies handsomely to get one. That some companies derive a commercial jet airliner from it is merely a side-effect, not a deliberate act of industrial policy.
BTW: some of the technology developed for the V-bombers eventually ended up in Concorde.
Re: Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park
Pretty sure the American Jet industry sometimes relies on US Government subsidies.
Errr Um... Boeing being subsidised by Uncle Sam is well documented. GE (Jets) got many a [cough, cough] bung to keep things going in lean times (eg after the end of the Vietnam War and the Korean Was before it)
"The same thing happened with jet airplanes."
Yes, now, if UK didn't send the blueprints and some samples to Stalin....
I'm already a patreon supporter for the Cambridge computer museum, but I've donated money to TNMOC.
TNMOC is awesome
They are nerd-tastic ladies and gents.
Poor buggers
I bet they feel a little bit dirty this morning.....
rubber mac ---->
Re: Poor buggers
Pecunia non olet as they say.
Not going to be sarcastic here, FB finally doing something right for once and £1m is nothing to them !
Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park
> 'Facebook simply would not exist today if not for Bletchley Park,'
I'm sure it wouldn't. Not because of any code-breaking work that Turing might have had a hand in but because of the traffic analysis work done by others.