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Hewlett Packard - 25th June 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
London, UK.

HP and Bletchley Park to collaborate on digitising site’s World War II archives.

HP & Bletchley Park logos

HP today announced that it will be collaborating with Bletchley Park, the site of the United Kingdom’s main counter-intelligence decryption activities during World War II, to digitise the Park's vast archive of historical documents and make this accessible to the public in digital format.

HP is partnering with the Bletchley Park Trust, the entity that runs Bletchley Park’s National Codes Centre, museum and educational facilities, to donate and deploy document management and scanning technologies to help commit over 1,000,000 of the site’s historic documents to digital format. HP will also provide ongoing free consultancy and training to aid the digitisation process. The archives include communication transcripts, releases, memoranda, maps, photographs and other material tracing and referencing some of the most significant events of the Second World War.

HP assists Bletchley Park to digitise WW2 archive
Digitising the Bletchley Park Archive

Digitising the archive will help preserve its records and give members of the general public—including users outside the United Kingdom—their first ever chance to easily search stories and material on historical events documented in the archive, as well as transform the research process for academics and educators.

The high-level intelligence produced by under-cover mathematicians and military operatives at Bletchley Park during the War—codenamed Ultra—provided crucial assistance to the Allied war effort and is credited with having determined many of the key outcomes of the conflict. This includes activities that decrypted many of Germany’s military communications generated by the Enigma (thought to be unbreakable) and Lorenz machines, and which informed critical Allied counter-espionage strategies and activities designed to counter the German war effort. Their success reduced the length of the war by an estimated two years saving many lives.

The Bletchley Park site is home to, amongst others, the story of the legendary Alan Turing, father of the modern computer; the achievements of multiple spies and spymasters such as Zigzag, Garbo and Bond author Ian Fleming; and some of the technology—represented by the Enigma, Bombe rebuild, and Colossus machines—which heralded the development of the modern computer and the start of the information age.

The Bletchley Park archive, which traces many of the above personalities, currently exists entirely in paper format—most of it difficult to view or handle; and generally inaccessible by the general public for logistical reasons. Only limited access is allowed to the archive by academics and educators under strict supervision.

HP assists Bletchley Park to digitise WW2 archive
Capturing Bletchley Park's Archive

The digitisation process will involve not only the digital scanning of Bletchley Park’s vast archive but also the cataloguing, management and storage of the material in digital format so that it can be easily accessed and viewed by the public on digital platforms such as the Web.

Expected to take between three and five years, the project involves a wide range of HP document management and imaging technologies, including a range of state-of-the art HP Scanjet scanners and an HP ProLiant ML330 server to scan and store the data. Document management software to handle the cataloguing and virtual management of the data will be provided by HP in partnership with our solutions partner, Digital Workplace.

The process will need to take into account not only the sheer volume of paper-based materials involved, but also the dozens of different formats presented by the documents, including multiple page types, sizes, qualities and material compositions. This will be handled by a variety of specialised document management technologies supplied by HP, including preview technology in scanners to check the quality of individual scans; specialised software that ensures re-scanning of documents on demand; sheet-feed technology used for handling delicate or brittle documents; and a variety of scanning technologies to accommodate different paper formats and requirements.

Following an initial digitisation phase lasting a year or more, Bletchley Park will make the content available for access using a combination of paid-for and free content. This will make the Bletchley Park archive widely available, and give users around the world a first ever chance to search stories and articles on the unique historical events represented in the Bletchley archive.

"The Bletchley Park archive contains hundreds of thousands of documents tracing some of the most significant historical milestones of the twentieth century, including some of the events that defined the outcome of World War II," said Norman Richardson, Vice President & General Manager, HP Imaging and Printing Group, UK. "Our collaboration with Bletchley Park will not only ensure the preservation of this hugely significant archive but will also allow it to be made accessible and searchable digitally for the first time, untapping the value of this content for the benefit of audiences all over the world. We are hugely proud to be working with Bletchley Park and its team of volunteers to make this exciting project a reality."

"Bletchley Park is delighted and very grateful to HP for being its partner in the digitisation of the extensive archive held at the Park, through the very generous donation of a suite of high quality digitisation equipment, software and ongoing technical support," said Simon Greenish, Trust Director, Bletchley Park Trust. "This will help preserve and considerably increase access to the historic fragile materials, as well as enable researchers to see and study documents from the code-breaking work that took place during World War Two. There can be few archives which contain material that had such a profound impact on the world at the time and which is still relevant today. The project represents a considerable technical challenge and without the help from HP and the top end technology now in place, this project would not be happening."

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