June 27

Hightlights:

1. Watching The Imitaiton Game with friends
2. Seeing the amazing computers
3. Learning about all the secrecy at Bletchley Park

All the Details:

Bletchley Park

Enigma Machine

Our library science class set out for Bletchley Park on Monday morning, which would be our last group outing in London. In order to have an idea of the importance of Bletchley Park, a few of us had watched The Imitation Game staring Benedict Cumberbatch the night before. The movie, centered around Alan Turing’s work as a code breaker at Bletchley Park during WWII, was a beautiful and emotional tribute to Turing, and provided some background knowledge of code breaking. When we arrived at Bletchley Park, the introductory exhibit showed that there was actually much more happening at Bletchley, other than the dramatized events from the movie. We learned about the process used to break codes and the many machines, like the Enigma Machine, used to create and break the codes.

Due to the large size of Bletchley park, we decided to focus on a few of the areas to explore. First, we were able to tour an exhibit about the relationship between the technical advances at Bletchley and our current World Wide Web. It was extremely interesting to see how progress made during the war has had a lasting effect on the world. Next, we made our way through the museum that features a reconstructed Turing-Welchman Bombe, a huge computer that helped to break codes. The museum did an excellent job of showing the public how the different machines and computers worked. We then went on a walking tour throughout Bletchley and learned about the different people and jobs that existed here during WWII. The stories of people living in secrecy at Bletchley was fascinating. They couldn’t talk to their friends or families about anything that they did at work. This also meant that people working in different buildings within Bletchley had to keep secrets from each other. It would have been extremely difficult to live in an environment that was built on so much secrecy. Finally, we took a look through the beautiful mansion house.

Turing-Welchman Bombe

Bletchley Park Mansion