Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire

I realised as I logged on, that I had published the pictures before I added the writing.   In other words I pressed 'publish' rather than 'save draft' after I uploaded the photographs.   A senior moment.

We spent a lovely weekend with Donna, Patrick, Lucy and their dog, Poppy.   We were intending to go for a couple of long walks in the lovely Hertfordshire countryside but instead focused on computer history, and shopping.

On Bank Holiday Monday Donna took us, and Lucy, to Bletchley Park, home of the code breakers who decyphered German codes cyphers during World War II, thereby shortening the war by two years.   Bletchley Park was also significant in being instrumental in developing computers.

I found out about Bletchley Park, when I undertook a 10 week course on 'Computer History, Technology and Safety' through Coursera, which is run by the University of Michigan.  A free course.  And very interesting.  Fascinating in fact.  I learnt a lot about the history of computers and the internet.

But back to Bletchley Park.   Interestingly there are two organisations at Bletchley Park.  There is the house, plus grounds, and outlying buildings, which is where it all happened from 1938 until 1945.   Then there is another building, once part of the park, which houses the National Museum of Computing, which contains the most famous computer of WWII, Colossus.  Separate entities, and very little co-operation, it would appear.  And two entry fees.

The British Government bought Bletchley Park in 1938, to house a secret code breaking team, in a rural location, within easy reach of London, Cambridge and Oxford.   In fact, the grounds are opposite Bletchley railway station.  Huts were built in the grounds to house the different components of the code breaking organisation.  By 1944 there were 10,000 people working at Bletchley Park, all sworn to secrecy.  It was not until 1974, when a book was published, that word leaked out about what had happened at Bletchley Park.   In 1992 the Bletchley Park Trust was formed, to preserve the buildings for the nation.

The magnificent mansion in Bletchley Park, which served as the headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School.   As time went on it also became the recreation centre.

The beautiful ball room, which on Monday was set up with activities for children.

This room set up as an office, with two actors in full flow, discussing their social life at Bletchley.

The original Bombe machines, developed by Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman, to break the German Enigma, were housed in this hut, as well as other huts.  These macbines worked day and night, with teams of women (WRENS) operating the machinery.   Apparently this room, which housed the main Bombe machine, was hot and noisy.  Not great working conditions.   The machines in this photograph are imitation, and do not work.

The idea of the Bombe machines orginated in Poland, and the concept and plans were brought to England by three Polish men who escaped the German invasion.

There was much more to see in the park, but we needed to head off to the museum, before it closed.

The world's oldest original computer, called the Witch (Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computation), was built and used in 1951.   Luckily it was not the Birmingham ITCH.

Hitler started to use a more complex cypher machine called the Lorenz cypher machine to send messages between him and his senior staff.  The Codebreakers called this machine Tunny and the coded messages Fish.

A mistake was made during the sending of a message from Athens to Vienna, in that the message was sent twice, so two codebreakers, Tutte and Tiltman, were able to crack the new code.

Then new macbines were developed by Dr Max Newman and Tommy Flowers, to aid in decoding of the Lorenz codes, which had become too difficult to do by hand.  But all the machines ended up being too cumbersome or kept breaking down.

The line up of machines that were developed after the Bombe machine.

Then finally a new machine was developed, called Colossus, which could read paper tape at 5,000 characters per second, the paper tape in its wheels travelled at 30 miles per hour.   It meant that the huge mathematical work that needed to be done to break Lorenz could be carried out in hours, rather than in weeks.   A very impressive machine.

By 1945 there were ten Colossus' working in Bletchley.  Hitler was sent a deceptive message about the D Day landings.  And of course the landings occurred in Normandy instead of Calais (the deceptive message).   Very clever.

Then we were off to other parts of the museum, to look at the very old, the old, and not so old computers.

In the section (photograph below) the guides must have tbought we were super intelligent, as they kept plying us with information and asking questions about memory and disc space in comparison to modern mobile telephones.  Donna, thank goodness, made a reasonable stab at the answers.

Now we were on familiar ground, machines that have been used in the past thirty years.   This was also a hands on area.  We were a little overwhelmed at how much there was to see, and time was running out.  But Lucy managed to play a few games.   However we remembered the games on the machines.

Remember typing the instructions?

Early laptops!

And the school BBCs!

Bletchley Park is such an educational place to visit, and a must for anyone interested in technology, which is everyone of course.   The museum is fantastic for children because more than half of the museum is hands on, and also includes a Lego room.  And it is worth noting that the museum is not part of Bletchley Park, and is considerably cheaper too, £2 per adult, and free for children.

However we certainly will make a return visit to Bletchley Park, to look at the house again, plus the huts, the National Radio Centre, and anything else that we missed on Monday.   Our tickets cover us for the year.