The Heath Robinson Museum collaborated with The National Museum of Computing (TNMoC) at Bletchley Park to help celebrate their reconstruction of ‘Heath Robinson’, a WWII code-breaking machine, the precursor of Colossus. It was named ‘Heath Robinson’ after the man known for his drawings of complicated machines to perform simple tasks. Sadly, Heath Robinson never knew this as he died during WWII and everything at Bletchley Park was top secret until long after the end of the war.
In acknowledgement of the connection with Heath Robinson, TNMoC have built an interactive fun contraption called ‘Just William’ for the Museum, which can be found in the Museum’s Heath Robinson Gallery. Visitors can interrogate ‘Just William’ and, if its questions are answered correctly, can win a sweet!
Just William was a hugely popular attraction for the 200 or so visitors – young and old alike – to the Museum as part of Open House London on Saturday, 21 September. All clearly enjoyed their visit and took full advantage of the opportunity to chat to the Museum’s architects, ZMMA.
