New voices for Bletchley Park’s forgotten engineers

The story of Bletchley Park and D-Day is well known but the engineers behind Colossus – the world’s first electronic computer – have largely remained in the shadows. TNMOC wanted to honour their legacy for the 80th anniversary of D-Day but the challenge was how to make these hidden voices accessible, engaging and meaningful for today’s visitors.

At the museum’s disposal were typed transcripts of interviews with a handful of engineers conducted in the 1970s by Newcastle University Professor Brian Randell, along with Colossus circuit diagrams – rich in detail but never fully explored.

Vision
Our goal was to create an experience that allowed visitors to connect with the engineers through their own words, while taking the story beyond simply one of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We wanted an exhibition that celebrated Colossus through the human endeavour and experiences behind it.

Approach

Blended Past brought this vision to life by combining AI, curation and contemporary art. We carefully reviewed the transcripts and circuit diagrams, identifying extracts that revealed recurring themes and key insights about the engineers’ work, war-time and day-to-day life. Using tested AI tools, we trained the system to recreate distinct voices and generate conversational-quality readings of these extracts, preserving authenticity and nuance.

Visitors experienced the results through gallery listening stations, hearing history unfold decades after it was committed to paper. To complement this, contemporary artist Dominika Kark reinterpreted a Colossus schematic as a striking mural, displayed alongside an original engineering document. This side-by-side installation allowed visitors to compare past and present, connecting technical detail with human story.

Outcome
The outcome was a fully immersive, multi-sensory experience: the engineers’ voices actually heard for the first time in decades, archival material made tangible, Colossus presented as a story of human achievement not just a triumph of engineering and science. The project demonstrated how AI and creativity can re-position an existing story and while honouring the legacy.