A trip to Bletchley Park
Bletchley park was used as a place for deciphering and decoding German military and intelligence communications during World War II. Interestingly, in order for the place to remain secretive, the people arrived there under the guise of attending ‘Captain Ridley’s Shooting Party’. After the War, the existence of Bletchley Park was kept a secret and the people working there were not allowed to reveal anything of the place and what they were doing. It was not until many years later that these remarkable achievements came to be known.
One interesting fact is that the people who worked there were not necessarily scholars but simply people who are really good at solving crosswords. They recruited people who managed to solve a crossword puzzle, published on The Daily Telegraph within 12 minutes. Besides that, they were people of different profession and background working together. They range from poets, aristocrats to chess players. Another interesting fact is that around 75% of the people working there were women!(If you are interested, you can try the crossword here: http://theimitationgamemovie.com/ )
The ‘uncrackable’ enigma code with
This machine is used to check if the code produced by the machine is accurate of not. It involves aligning the correct alphabet to the white dot, assigning the correct alphabet to the arrow located at right and pressing the keys located at the bottom. Usually, a different alphabet would light up. If the alphabets are, for instance, N to V and V to N then the code is accurate. If it were N to B and B to P, the code would be wrong and they have the run the bombe machine again. With the help of a very kind gentleman and my friend, I managed to check the code (see the picture below).
(Also, which genius put these two photos side by side?)
All in all, there are many places and things to explore in Bletchley Park and it is full of mini games to play (mostly deciphering codes). If you dislike deciphering codes …
.. you could always play the imitation game (get it?).
