Beautiful Bletchley Park was purchased by the British Government in 1938 to house the very secret code breaking and intelligence efforts of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS). Located north west of London, it could easily be reached from Oxford and Cambridge but was far enough from London to be deemed safe from a potential air attack which was expected.
At its peak an estimated 10,000 people worked there and in the associated out-stations. It is calculated that the work of the code breakers shortened World War 2 by two years.
It was such a secret place that families of the employees did not know where they worked or what they did. The Germans did not know of the place until 1975 when a former Bletchley worker published a book about the work achieved.
They intercepted, deciphered, analysed and distributed the intelligence derived from enemy radio signals.
The cyphers were created by an Enigma machine used by the Germans to send supposedly impenetrable codes and cyphers. However mathematicians developed unique data processing machines which sped up the code breaking work of the GC & CS.
The breakthrough came with the development of an incredibly complicated machine later called a Bomba machine devised by three Polish mathematicians who shared their work with the British and the French. (They didn't know what to call it so named it Bomba after a Polish ice cream!!).
In 1939, Cambridge codebreaker and mathematician, Gordon Welchman realised the Enigma machine settings were changed at midnight each night by the Germans. From this information 24 hour shifts were started at Bletchley Park. Welchman and another brilliant mathematician, Alan Turing, inspired by the Polish Bomba machine, developed the Bombe which deduced the day's Enigma settings of both the rotors and the plug board, by eliminating the many incorrect possibilities.
The Enigma machine used rotors to scramble message into unintelligible cypher text. Each machine generated different cypher text and finding those settings which were reset at midnight was the challenge faced by the code breakers. The bombe machine shortened the process.
The work was done in huts around the property. They were dim, soulless places.
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| Hut 4 - now a restaurant |
If you only do one thing if you ever go to England take a trip to Bletchley Park. It is such an amazing place, so complex and so interesting what was achieved and in total secrecy.
The estate was divided into Huts, each with its own task. Workers in each hut did not know what workers in the other huts were working on and the staff did not know what happened to the messages they deciphered or what significance they played in the war campaign.
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| The reconstructed Bombe machine
The tragedy of Alan Turing
The mathematician who was the spearhead
of the brilliance of Bletchley was Alan Turing.
He achieved so much, too much to record here, but if you are interested please click on this link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_turing part of which records his death as the following: Mr Turing was convicted of indecency and homosexuality and accepted treatment with oestrogen injections (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. He died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death a suicide; his mother and some others believed it was accidental. On 10 September 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for "the appalling way he was treated." The Queen granted him a posthumous pardon on 24 December 2013. Below one of the residences now used as administration |
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| Brilliant mathematician, Alan Turing |
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| The lake in the centre of the property - a peaceful place |
The Sunbeam Talbot used in the film, Enigma, starring Mick Jagger, who donated the vehicle to the
Bletchley Park Trust after the filming.
A little history behind the vehicle
One of the rooms in the mansion which has been faithfully restored
The property is maintained by English Heritage and now sees many conferences, dinners and weddings which all helps with the running costs of the property.
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