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IT’S EASY TO become fascinated by Bletchley Park simply by walking through the gates and exploring the old mansion house, the renovated wooden huts and concrete buildings that pulsed with the codebreaking energy of Britain during World War II.
My interest was first piqued by Robert Harris’s novel ‘Enigma’ but it was the Sundays I spent as a volunteer in Bletchley Park’s archive that cemented my passion for the site’s untold stories. Surrounded by cupboards full of declassified documents copied from The National Archives and boxes of memorabilia donated by Bletchley Park veterans I could almost hear the sound of people behind the glass panel of the door at the end of the corridor and smell the past in the musky aroma of so much history.
This was the start of my journey as a researcher, which has led me to uncover the previously unpublished papers of women codebreakers Margaret Rock and Joan Clarke. Both women joined Bletchley Park in April 1940 and went on to enjoy long careers as codebreakers at GCHQ.
The codebreakers of Bletchley Park
Margaret arrived shortly before her 37th birthday and had worked as a part time statistician. She found herself breaking German Military Intelligence (Abwehr) codes with legendary codebreaker Dilly Knox and another female codebreaker, Mavis Lever. Dilly was unique in his giving his ‘girls’ the opportunity to explore their potential and develop codebreaking skills equal to their male peers.
Crucially, the Abwehr Enigma break gave Britain access to messages confirming that Hitler and his commanders believed the misinformation fed to them by double agents about the D-Day landings location.
Joan Clarke arrived fresh from receiving a double first in Mathematics from Newnham College, Cambridge. She was met by Alan Turing and whisked into Hut 8 to help break Naval Enigma using the new Bombe machine. Her skills were soon realised and within a week a table was dragged into an office she would share with the senior male codebreakers. Joan was quickly promoted to linguist – something she found amusing as she had little skill for languages. She enjoyed answered questionnaires ‘grade: linguist; languages: none.’ Joan was promoted to Deputy Head of Hut 8 in 1944. She was the only woman to reach such a senior level in a cryptographic role, yet she is better known for her brief engagement to Alan Turing.
The true story is more fascinating than fiction
The epic battle to break Naval Enigma is told in the recent movie ‘The Imitation Game’. Like the book Enigma did in the 1990s, the movie has gone a long way to raise awareness and broaden the appeal of Bletchley Park’s past. Many people, including myself, have been introduced to our codebreaking heroes through these fictional accounts, which have been inspired by factual events. I urge people to take a step further and discover more about this fascinating site and the people who worked there. The true story of Bletchley Park is even more fascinating than the fiction.
In my research, I am always trying to get closer to the inspirational women of Bletchley Park’s past. Events like Inspirefest 2015 give me the chance to observe and meet inspiring, high-achieving women, brought together by Silicon Republic, and best represent the women whose lives and contribution to STEM subjects will be written about in the future.
Kerry Howard is a writer and researcher with a consuming passion for Bletchley Park’s untold stories. She shares her research on her blog www.bletchleyparkresearch.co.uk and is currently putting the finishing touches to her new book ‘Women Codebreakers – The story of Margaret Rock, Mavis Lever and Joan Clarke’. You can contact her via Twitter @CaptainRidley and Facebook: BletchleyParkResearch.
Inspirefest is a unique, new, three-day, international sci-tech event aiming to showcase diversity and leadership in Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths (STEM). Organised by Silicon Republic, Inspirefest will take place in Dublin from 18–20 June in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre and Merrion Square Park, where an extensive fringe festival and outreach programme will bring together design, the arts and STEM. Tickets are on sale now at a special early-bird price of €450, as well as two-for-one tickets and discounts for bootstrapped start-ups and students. Sale ends at midnight 15 May 2015. For further information: www.inspirefest2015.com and Twitter: @inspirefestHQ.
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‘The Imitation Game’ was a great movie, Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Alan Turing was first class
Is he because he was gay and later killed by the MI6 for fear of pillow talk in Sweden? Have an apple…
Totally disagree. Incredibly important people and events but the movie bored me to death.
Well, tha’s persona taste Fergal, but we can agree these people were incredibly important and deserve recognition.
Enigma is a great read, brilliantly written by Harris, I would highly recommend it!
Shane Ross’s mother worked in Bletchley Park during WW2, at what exact level I’m not sure. She was so reticent about it that when she and Shane Ross were interviewed on radio by Miriam O’Callaghan a few years ago, he eventualy complimented Miriam: “You’re getting more out of her than we ever could!”
Had no-one heard of the Official Secrets Act?!
Joan Clarke and Kiera Knightly look very alike.
Women are more than objects to be drooled over for your amusement Vincenzo. Someone should cut your ear off.
Cracking codes at a time when women were expected to crack eggs
Yes and in keeping with the times they couldn’t be paid the same salary as the men for doing exactly the same work.
Nothing has changed since unfortunately.
There is not a pro rat aren’t charge, household charge, water charge, electric/gas charge, dustbin charge, travel charge, medical charge etc…
Why not? If women get 2/3 then let all the bills be 2/3 and also food cost claim to put in.
Correction pro rata and other correction please, I cannot make this machine type what I type!
“Yes and in keeping with the times they couldn’t be paid the same salary as the men for doing exactly the same work.”
Men were expected to provide for their families and women were not.
Not to mention the fact that you’ve managed to completely forget that most of the men were over seas fighting instead of being warm and snug in bed.
I applaud the actions of the women who helped break the codes of the Nazis they helped to save many lives but please stop the victimhood narrative!
The Imitation Game (film) is an insult to all who worked at Camp X Ray during WW2. Tommy Flowers doesn’t even get a mention, despite actually building the world’s first programmable electronic computer (Collossus), which used Turings code, in fact none of his team does. Also, Cairncross was nowhere near the Enigma section of the camp, the Soviets believed the British had a spy in Hitlers inner circle, then the film accuses Turing of being a traitor by covering for a Soviet Spy, namely Cairncross, which would have been punishable by death had it happened and been found out. It glosses over Turings suicide, a single bite into a cyanide laced apple, the Apple was found on his bedside table, standing upright with 1 bite removed from it. Anyone familiar with that image?
A man and a team that has made probably the biggest contribution to modern technology and our way of life, as Jobs & Wozniack recognised, and the film that they make to portray it ends up telling us that they were either mad, traitorous, up themselves, a55holes or all four.
I hope someone rewrites the history correctly & makes a film worthy of the team that gave us the ability to write statements like I just have on the device I have just done it on. Oh and after the war the Brits took sledgehammers to all their computers (except 1, which I think is on display in either the GPO or imp. War museum) and handed the designs, codes and everything else to the US free of charge. There’s friendship.
Steve Jobs, in an interview with Stephen Fry, confirmed that the Apple Logo was NOT related to Turing’s suicide. (though he wished it was).
No, Steve Jobs said he told his daughter when she asked him about it that he wished he had thought of it but Wozniack came up with it out of tribute.
Yep, and the Film is based on the life of Turing before, during and after the time of the enigma machine, it’s more about the man’s mind and how he struggled to fit in, and was later persecuted rather than a catalog of his many achievements and the achievements of his colleagues, that much is pretty clear from the get-go.
Coming from a computer science background, I’m well aware of his history, and that of Camp X Ray and subsequently the race to where we are now, but at the end of the day, it was a movie, it’s never going to work if you spend 3 hours listing peoples names and displaying complex equations.
I understand the requirement of dramatic licence when making films but to insert Cairncross at the exclusion of Flowers is stretching dramatic licence way too far. IMHO.
No, Middle Class Cork, you’re wrong, Tricia is right – see this interview with the logo’s designer:
creativebits.org/interview/interview_rob_janoff_designer_apple_logo
Didn’t those ladies solve a murder afterwards using their code-breaking knowledge?
I’m told my grandfather spent time at Bletchley (by my father) but I haven’t been able to find out anything more…. and no idea how to go about asking
Contact the Imperial War Museum in London Tony, maybe they can help you
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers
“Flowers designed Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages.”
The following bit is nonsense up to the “Flowers proposed an electronic system, which he called Colossus, using perhaps 1,800 thermionic valves (vacuum tubes), and having only one paper tape instead of two (which required synchronisation) by generating the wheel patterns electronically.” Flowers created this machine himself and was out of pocket building it and he tried to prove Colossus was important to the British military and Turing was not involved in any of its design or gave any help. The truth was blurred after WW2 to give credit to others as Tommy Flowers built the machine using his own time, money and effort to prove it because he was not born in the right class… Wikipedia here has a lot of post WW2 propaganda in it even to this day…
“After the war, Flowers was granted £1,000 by the government, payment which did not cover Flowers’ personal investment in the equipment and most of which he shared amongst the staff who helped him build and test Colossus. Ironically, Flowers applied for a loan from the Bank of England to build another machine like Colossus but was denied the loan because the bank did not believe that such a machine could work. He could not argue that he had already designed and built many of these machines because his work on Colossus was covered by the Official Secrets Act. His work in computing was not fully acknowledged until the 1970s.”
“In 1976, he published Introduction to Exchange Systems, a book on the engineering principles of telephone exchanges.
In 1977 Flowers was made an honorary Doctor of Science by Newcastle University.
In 1980 he was the first winner of the Martlesham Medal in recognition of his achievements in computing.
In 1993, he received a certificate from Hendon College, having completed a basic course in information processing on a personal computer.”
It was Flowers and not Turing who saved their bacon but one was elite in British society and the other worked for the post office, and it is this elite nonsense that has warped history even to today.
Ahhh but would they be able to figure out the “there’s nothing wrong with me” code that women use when they’re in a strop?
If you ever figure it out let me know
Don’t forget that the co-inventer of the first computer was a woman.
Her name was Ada Lovelace.
Charles Babbage used to remark that she understood the machine better than he did.
The Ada computer language used in high end military computers is named after her.
Her father is better known to most people.
He was the poet Lord Byron.
Babbage tried to cook himself once as well…
The thick lip on her…
have your say