The National Museum of Computing and Bletchley Park

A couple of weeks ago, on March 4th, I had the opportunity to go to the National Museum of Computing and Bletchley Park with my computer science class. Visiting such an important site was incredibly enlightening and ties back to so much of what we have been learning about computing and World War II in England over the past couple of months in our class.

While visiting Churchill’s War Rooms the week prior to our Bletchley Park Field Trip, our guide mentioned Bletchley and the important events that were happening there simultaneously to the war rooms. In class and in our visit, I was informed about the great importance Bletchley played in WWII and the expanse of technological advancements that happened at the estate while it was kept a secret. Over 1,000 people worked for the war effort at a single time on the estate, with projects only known to the people working in each individual hut. The house and estate an hour outside of London performed as the perfect undercover operations grounds for so many important projects that helped the Allies win the war, including breaking the enigma machine.

Though it the appearance is similar to some typewriters upon initial glance, this machine – the Enigma – played a key role in the Nazi regimes day-to-day operations. The Enigma allowed the Nazis to communicate using code that changed and could not be easily deciphered by human minds. The machine enabled Nazi progression in the war, something Churchill and others became aware must be stopped through interception of messages and decoding. In comes Alan Turing and team, people who built a machine – the Bombe – to decode the Enigma.

The above two pictures of the Bombe depict how complex the machine to break the Enigma was.

Getting to visit Bletchley and learn about what went on there to win the war was enlightening! I learned so much from the speakers on how the Enigma and Bombe machines worked, which I thought was really cool. Being in a place with so much history, especially events that happened less than a century ago, allowed me to witness the importance of technological advancements in society. I greatly appreciated this experience and loved hearing about the important role of so many women at Bletchley!

Thank you for reading!