Bletchley Park

Today we visited Bletchley Park, home of the British WW2 codebreakers. The facility is conserved as a memorial to 10,000 incredibly dedicated staff who worked on codebreaking, the most famous of all codes being, the German Enigma. Due to developments on a codebreaking machine with the capacity and speed necessary to decode the elite codes used by German High Command, Colossus, the World’s first stored program computer was born, the acknowledged progenitor of all modern computers.

The visit was enhanced by a walking tour of the grounds and being present for an explanation of the basic principle and a working demonstration of a Bombe replica, identical to the machines used to determine the code wheel settings used for a 24 hour cycle of military transmissions using the Enigma coding system. The quote of the day was, “How do you find a needle in a haystack? Simple, you just remove the hay one piece at a time and at some point you must find the needle.” and that is how the machines basically worked. The process being enhanced by very educated guesses as to where to start removing the hay.

Another aspect was a very well presented insight into the living and working conditions for the codebreakers, all of whom kept secret their involvement for at least thirty years until the first stories started to surface of the work done at Bletchley Park. In talking to one of the guides, he knew of one married couple who only revealed their work to each other when two separate Bletchley Park Veterans Reunion Invitations arrived at their house in the same postal delivery. Almost unimaginable given the current day disclosures on social media.