Swindon has a secret museum, hidden between the library and the theatre, opposite the model shop, its unprepossessing frontage occasionally boasts a Sinclair C5.  At last I’ve sat in one, and to my surprise found it quite comfortable.  Shame about the other drivers that drove it off the road and out of production.

This museum, a charity totally run by enthusiastic volunteers has a remarkable collection of computers  computer paraphernalia to remind you, if you are of a certain age, of those computers you first worked with, ZX80, Commodore PET and Apples.

From 1978, we’d had a home built personal computer made up of the television and tape recorder that I’d bought for my OU studies, our wedding present angle-poise light acting as the light source to read paper tape input that was wound round a cotton bobbin.   This was how we input a version of the word processing software NASPEN.  This was great because  I could deliver beautifully presented Tutor Marked Assignments for my Open University degree studies – a competitive step ahead of my  fellow students who didn’t have access to this technological luxury.  It was the advent of the IBM PC available to everyone’s home in 1982 that meant our home was no longer unusual.  No longer was I the only student who could word process TMAs so that they presented a grade better than everyone else’s.

The Swindon museum has a laptop that looks like an earlier version of my first 1992 Toshiba laptop, which still works though I no longer connect it to the Internet.  I like its tracker ball and still dislike these pads that go with modern laptops.    It also has log tables and slide rules.  I never learned to use a slide rule because I didn’t do A-level maths.  However, we do have a very old wood and plastic one  with German tables and the name F. BECKER scratched out and next to it scratched in “LIBERATED FROM BAD UNGSTER May 1945”.

This museum complements the Bletchley museum that tells you so much about Turing and computing during the second world war.  Its premises are not as pleasant at the main hall at Bletchley but its curators are as enthusiastic and knowledgeable.  Get them to talk you round the Swindon museum.  Even better, combine your visit to the museum with one to the model shop in the afternoon and to the theatre in the evening.