This weekend saw The National Museum of Computing host the first-ever British vintage computing festival at Bletchley Park, with hundreds of retro-tech enthusiasts gathering at the computing museum at Bletchley Park to look at, play with and talk about the history of computing technology in the UK.
TechRadar was in attendance, managing to use Twitter on a ZX Spectrum – a rather novel experience for a machine which we were more used to playing Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy on many moons ago.
ZX Spectrum: Retro-tweets in store at this year's Vintage Computer Festival
Bletchley Park is of course a historic venue in its own right, as it was the centre of Britain's code-breaking efforts in World War II, a key moment in the history and development of British computing.
The event, held by TNMOC, proved that computing in the UK has a much greater history than many of us realise, way beyond our fondly remembered gaming machines such as the Sinclair ZX81 and BBC Micro Model B.
To top off this year's vintage computing festival's proceedings, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark played a cracking gig, reminding us of many of the things we loved about the 1980s – gaming, music and (at the time) mind-blowing new home computing technologies.
In other pics from this year's vintage computing fair at Bletchley Park:
ARMDROID: The Beebcontrol robotic arm being put through its paces at Britain's largest celebration of vintage computing held at The National Museum of Computing, (TNMOC)
GENERATION GAP: Mischa Tromans with her daughters Naomi and Amandaplaying Space Invaders on a Commodore PET CBM 3008 computer
RETRO GUITAR: 5-year-old Anna from Luton playing a digital guitar on a Shred Z64 computer
REMINISCING: David Caroline from Burton on Trent looking at a 1993 computer motherboard on display at Britain's largest celebration of vintage computing held at The National Museum of Computing, (TNMOC), in Bletchley Park from 19-20 June 2010.
(All photos © 2010, John Robertson)
Your comments (4) Click to add a new comment
npennington
June 21st 2010
4. Well..... it's not your classic ZX Spectrum with the lovely soft keys but it is the later Spectrum 3 with floppy drive and a proper keyboard...
More nostalgia can be found over here
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=222
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fellwalker
June 21st 2010
3. that is not a spectrum
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tnmocvolunteer
June 21st 2010
2. Sorry we didn't get to you.
We are open on Thursday and Saturday afternoons,and many of the machines shown at the festival are exhibits at the museum.
See our website - http://www.tnmoc.org/ - for all we can do. We'd welcome you as a member.
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rimscar
June 21st 2010
1. We're a company based in Milton Keynes and didn't see any advertising for this. We would have loved to have gone!
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