British engineers voted the Bombe, the computer of the Second World War, to be the “favourite artefact” ever, and thus it won the Engineering Award. It was the 30th anniversary of the award, and on this occasion 105 thousand members of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers were asked to cast their votes. They could vote for one favourite of the 99 heritage award winners. Concorde came in as the second favourite, while the Rolls-Royce RB 211 engine received third place.

The electromechanical device called Bombe is one of the prides of Bletchley Park from the Second World War. The device was intended to discover the daily settings of Enigma coders in the various German military telecommunications networks. The functional setting was designed by Alan Turing with substantial contribution from Gordon Welchman, while engineering work was done by Harold “Doc” Keen of the British Tabulating Machine Company. These machines, weighing roughly one ton, were approximately 2,134 metres wide, 1,83 metres high, and 0,69 metres deep.

The original blueprints were used in the reconstruction of the codebreaking machine, which was completed in 2007. The reconstruction project was led by John Harper of the Computer Conservation Society (CCS), which is an organisation taking a key role in the preservation, reconstruction, and restoration of rarities in British computer history.