Short answers, pulled from the story.
Vice Admiral Robert FitzRoy established the Met Office on the 1st of August 1854 within the Board of Trade to serve mariners. This new office aimed to protect lives at sea through timely warnings following the tragedy of the Royal Charter passenger vessel.
The Met Office moved its headquarters from Bracknell in Berkshire to Exeter Business Park in September 2003. The new £80m structure sat near junction 29 of the M5 motorway and was officially opened by Robert May, Baron May of Oxford on the 21st of June 2004.
The Met Office has operated some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world including systems like the Ferranti Mercury, English Electric KDF9, IBM System/360 195, CDC Cyber 205, Cray Y-MP C90/16, Cray T3E 900/1200, NEC SX-6, NEC SX-8, IBM Power6140, Cray XC40, and Microsoft Azure systems deployed in 2025. These machines run the Unified Model released in 1990 which forms the basis of all operational numerical weather prediction.
The Met Office operates one of only two World Area Forecast Centres globally known as WAFC London while the other sits in Kansas City, Missouri. Daily data from this centre routes aircraft safely and economically on long-haul journeys with information including wind speed, direction, air temperature, cloud type, and tops.
On the 23rd of August 2015 the BBC announced it would replace the Met Office with MeteoGroup to fulfill legal obligations to provide best value for money for licence fee payers. The corporation still uses some Met Office data for certain forecasts today such as severe weather warnings and the Shipping Forecast.