Bletchley Park

Main house, Bletchley Park

On Saturday our group made an excursion to Bletchley Park, now made popular by the film The Imitation Game but really made famous by its success breaking the German Enigma Code during World War II.   Churchill, on a rare visit, told they staff they were the "geese who laid the golden eggs and never cackled."  Indeed, the current efforts to restore Bletchley Park are the result in part of the decommissioning of some of its secrets, efforts to obtain a pardon and official apology for the "gross indecency" conviction of Turing after the war, and in part by the interest of computer buffs in recreating Turing's original "Bombe", the machine that calculated the enigma code each day.  Churchill ordered all the machines destroyed after the war to preserve the secret of the work done at Bletchley Park.

The Bombe

It is interesting to note the contribution made by Poles who defected to the Allied side after Hitler invaded their country.  In the first instance, Turing's machine wound up being named after a Polish ice cream dish (a Bomba) that was reputedly being eaten by a group of Polish cypher geeks when they got the idea for how to beat the Enigma.  Not only did most of the Polish Air Force defect to Britain in 1939, but they brought with them the work of their scientists and decoders on the Enigma Machine -- work they had done during the terrible year between the Munich Pact and the invasion of their country.  That work was critical in giving the Bletchley Park group a starting point much further advanced than would otherwise have been possible.

Work Station

The old country house that the British government took over in 1939 was quite lovely, but Turing and his group worked in what had been the fruit cellar behind the house (read: cold and damp) and most of the rest of the crew were in huts built hastily and with virtually no amenities.  One hut communicated with another by telephone and so nobody knew the location or identity of the person to whom s/he was speaking.  Could be London; could be two huts over.  It meant that even people rooming together had no idea what their companions did -- or even where they worked.

Typical dormitory room

The dormitories were not much better than the work spaces and pity those who lived off site, bicycling to work on dark country lanes in rain and winter.

Bletchley Park is still very much a work in progress with more restoration and more exhibits going up all the time.  What it lacks in coherence at the moment is more than made up for by its extraordinarily powerful story, however.  It was really wonderful to experience its atmosphere first hand.