On Tuesday 25th November, fifteen of our Maths and Computer Science students stepped back in time at Bletchley Park, the historic home of Britain’s wartime codebreakers. From touring Alan Turing’s workspace and the famous Bombe machine to trying their hand at deciphering messages with the Lorenz, the trip offered a fascinating glimpse into the hidden world of intelligence during the Second World War. First Year student Maisie shares her reflections on a day that brought history, mathematics, and computing vividly to life…
Bletchley was developed into an intelligence base in 1938 because of its prime location, with close proximity to major cities such as Oxford, Cambridge, and London. By being distanced from the capital, it was safer location as it wasn’t a potential target.
The day commenced with a tour of the park, gaining insight how enemy messages were intercepted and deciphered during the Second World War. We saw a glimpse into the lives of the 8,995 workers, 75% of whom were women, and the vow of secrecy to regarding their work at Bletchley Park. We then went into the huts where they worked to see the conditions and various exhibitions, including the Bombe machine and where Alan Turing worked, in Cottage 3. We continued with an insightful workshop into the inner workings of the Lorenz machine. We had the opportunity to crack our own codes, find an encoded message, and learn the relationship between cipher & plain text, and how to use a key to go between them. We then got to interact with the Lorenz machine and learned about the magnitude of possible codes it could decipher. We then had lunch, followed by a further exploration of the park to end the day. It was an insightful trip in educating us in the inner workings of decoding during the war and the parts of the conflict that went more unnoticed but were crucial to the war effort.
