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Google promotes Bletchley Park with Street View trike

Google is sharing the wealth with code-breaking hotspot Bletchley Park to fund repairs, and it's sending a camera-trike to put it on Street View.

Luke Westaway Senior editor
Luke Westaway is a senior editor at CNET and writer/ presenter of Adventures in Tech, a thrilling gadget show produced in our London office. Luke's focus is on keeping you in the loop with a mix of video, features, expert opinion and analysis.
Luke Westaway
2 min read

Google -- you know, that company that sort of controls the whole Internet -- is running a campaign to help restore Bletchley Park, the historic location where Alan Turing and his band of real-life geek superheroes helped crack the Enigma code, theTelegraph reports.

Google has sent Street View cameras mounted on a trike around the National Codes Centre there, with the aim of documenting the important buildings, some of which have fallen into disrepair.

Google hopes capturing Bletchley Park through Street View's all-seeing eyes will raise interest in the site, letting anyone who's slightly too lazy to go to Buckinghamshire themselves cruise around the location virtually from their laptops.

Bletchley Park is a Mecca for nerds and historians alike. It was home of Britain's code decryption team, who intercepted and decoded messages from enemy forces during the Second World War.

Google has also previously put money towards securing the papers of Turing, the hugely influential computer scientist behind much of Bletchley Park's code-crackery.

Google recently hosted a garden party at Bletchley Park to raise money to repair Block C, which played host to the massive punch-card index used for decryptions. Speaking at the bash, UCL computer science academic Dr Sue Black said, "Google loves Bletchley Park and Bletchley Park loves Google."

"At Google our heroes are Alan Turing and the people who worked on breaking the codes at Bletchley Park," said Google's head of communications Peter Barron.

"I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that without Alan Turing, Google as we know it wouldn't exist."

Have you visited Bletchley Park? Are you keen to see it on Street View? Let us know in the comments section, or on our Facebook page. If you're feeling generous, you can donate to the Bletchley Park trust here.