Oyrgpuyrl Cnex

We recently welcomed Brush and Bel to London - primarily they were here to see Wicked, but we got to hang around with them for a few days on either side, which conveniently included John's birthday. We still don't quite know how, but the topic of Bletchley Park came up at Johnny's birthday dinner, and the idea of a nerd-excursion to the home of modern computing was born.


For those who have no idea of the significance of Bletchley Park, and/or haven't seen the film Enigma, here's the quick summary. In WWII, the Germans used a machine called an Enigma to encrypt their radio communications.


It was an electro-mechanical machine which used a system of rotors to ensure that every character was encrypted with a different key to the one before it. The Germans believed their system to be unbreakable. They didn't reckon on the persistence, pluck and absolute brilliance that was assembled at Station X, the "Codes and Ciphers School" based in Bletchley, an hour north of London. Winston Churchill was a very keen supporter of this team of elite chess players, mathematicians and crossword-puzzle solvers, and they didn't let him down. In particular, a mathematician from Cambridge called Alan Turing devised a machine which would test a particular "crib" or suspected Enigma configuration in just 15 minutes, enabling the British to stay one step ahead of the Germans and ultimately win the war. This machine, the "Bombe" was the forerunner to the computer sitting in front of you right now. What makes it even more incredible is that your machine would take roughly twice as long to crack the code, such was the power of Turing's design.

Bletchley Park is now a museum, showcasing the fascinating work that was done at Station X, including guided tours of the various huts, and lectures from clever people who understand some of the technology. We sat in on a one-hour "Introduction to the Enigma" lecture, which was superb, and gave us an idea why the Germans believed their device to be unbreakable - there are 150 million million million possible configurations!

There simply wasn't enough time to see it all - luckily, the ticket gives admission for a whole year, so nerd-boy here can come back again and again...