Coronavirus: Facebook donates £1m to Bletchley Park to save it from closure
Written by News on 13/10/2020
Facebook has donated £1m to Bletchley Park to save it from closure following the coronavirus shutdown.
The Buckinghamshire country house was home to the government’s Code and Cypher School during the Second World War, where codebreakers used the first large-scale digital computers to decode Nazi communications.
It now operates as a museum and offers courses in coding but has fallen into a £2m deficit after the coronavirus lockdown forced it to close for four months.
The social networking site – whose founder Mark Zuckerberg is worth more than $100bn (£77bn) – said it is donating the money to recognise the site’s legacy as the birthplace of modern computing.
Alan Turing and the 9,000 others employed there are believed to have shortened the war by between two and four years by finding out what Britain’s enemies were doing and what attacks they had planned.
Steve Hatch, Facebook’s vice president for northern Europe, said the social network’s own work on new technologies would not have been possible without Bletchley Park.
“The historic achievements of Alan Turing and the Bletchley team have benefited all of us greatly, including Facebook, and we’re thrilled to help preserve this spiritual home of modern computing,” he said.
“The UK is our biggest engineering hub outside of the US and responsible for building technologies to keep our community safe, for the future of work and commerce, and for the exciting world of VR and AR.
“This wouldn’t have been possible without the legacy of Alan Turing and his team and our hope is that Bletchley staying open inspires the next generation of engineers.”
The Bletchley Park Trust, the registered charity that runs the heritage site, is also being given a £447,000 grant from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and its COVID-19 recovery fund.
Iain Standen, chief executive of Bletchley Park, said Facebook’s donation would help preserve the park’s visitor experiences and learning programmes.
“We are very grateful to both Facebook for their generous donation and DCMS for their financial support,” he added.
(c) Sky News 2020: Coronavirus: Facebook donates £1m to Bletchley Park to save it from closure
