Enigma Variations

[caddyman]

So yesterday we went to Bletchley Park, home of Enigma and Colossus for a look-see.

Furtle and I dragged ourselves out of bed at the unaccustomed time (on a Sunday) of 7.30am –egad, it was a hard thing to do – breakfasted and caught the bus to Wanstead to meet mrtonylee and literaryrose for the drive up to Bletchley, where we rendezvoused with rinkyandmerlin and Ant.

With the exception of the house and original outbuildings themselves, a lot of the old Second World War huts need a fair amount of refurbishment, though it’s hard to see where the loot for that will come from in this age of renewed austerity. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting museum, very interesting. I have to admit, though, that as I read more and more of the technical specs of the Enigma machines and such wonders as the Turing Bombe and finally Colossus and so and so forth, the sound of the Magic Roundabout theme tune started playing in my head and overwrote any conscious thought. Suffice it to say that a lot of people brained for a long time to great effect at Bletchley Park in the dark days of World War Two.

I was rather more comfortable (mentally, at least) looking at the toy museum (!) – I think that tells you rather more about me than I ought to reveal – and the historic accounts of the tales of derring-do that led to the capture and acquisition of Enigma for the Allies.

That said, although I didn’t understand a word how he did it, I could certainly appreciate the enormity of the task he performed. I am speaking now about a chap called Bill Tutte, of whom I heard not a jot previously. Essentially, working from two pieces of intercepted code sent one after the other, but in a slightly different form, but relaying the same message in the same code format, he was able over a period of several months to reverse engineer the Germans’ highly classified Lorenz cipher, which was far more complex than Enigma and used for strategic communications.

Just think about the braining that took: to reverse engineer an entire machine that you have never seen or even heard of, from first principles, simply by working on two pieces of the coded product…

Of course, the legend that is Alan Turing looms large over Bletchley Park, too. Much of the work that the others did and much of modern computing owes a huge debt to the man and it was good to see him celebrated –albeit belatedly it has to be admitted – in death as he was not in life.

I am off to bang rocks together.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Comments

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

Can you stick the pics under a cut, please? They're _huge_ (even as someone who has an interest in BP and its contents)

[changeling72.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. I would like to visit Bletchley. There's a rather good play called Breaking the Code by Hugh Whitemore about Alan Turing.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Sorry - it's not always obvious when posting from the app...

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I think you would enjoy it - though as I say some of the techy stuff scrambles mortal branes...

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

No worries! Thanks.

[mathcathy]

I enjoyed the cinema projector part of the museum the most. Dad could barely drag me away.

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

Ooh, wanna go!

[nortysarah.livejournal.com]

Next September, when it's open house season again, venture to Dollis Hill. There's an underground bunker there next to an impressive building which was once a GPO research centre, where they made Colossus. I also used to live there!