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Engineer security

Bletchley Park – where it all started

Paid a visit to Bletchley Park on Saturday with a crowd of friends. For the uninitiated Bletchley Park was the nerve centre of the Allied effort to listen in on enemy communications in World War 2. Most will have heard of the Enigma Machine that the Germans used to encrypt their communications. A number were there on display, under heavy supervision, since one of them was stolen in recent years.

I won’t trouble you with the whole 5 hours’ worth of visit although every minute of it was fascinating.

It is worth mentioning Colossus – the world’s first user programmable computer. Colossus was invented to assist in the process of decoding encrypted material. The first machine had 1,600 valves. Improvements to German cryptographic techniques rendered this one useless so Colossus 2 was born – with 2,200 valves and as such a big step forward in technology.

Most of the parts came from Post Office telephone exchanges. Indeed standing in front of Colossus 2 sounded just like being in a telephone exchange – lots of clicking. Using Colossus2 the Allies were able to tell that their efforts to deceive the Germans as to their invasion plans had worked.

Colossus 2, of which only ten or so were built, remained a secret for many years after WW2 which is why for a long time it didn’t feature as the world’s first programmable computer. Winston Churchill was so scared that the Russians, the new threat, would find out about the machine that all but two were destroyed and the remaining ones shipped to GCHQ in Cheltenham. The plans were also destroyed.

The technologies on show at Bletchley Park were developed within living memory. The progress we have made since is just mind boggling. Note the current desktop computer has a quad processor with 730 million transistors on a 263mm sq piece of Silicon using 45nm (0.045micron) technology. Someone might want to tell me if this fits in with Moore’s Law!

The photo below is of the Collosus2 replica that took 15 painstaking years to rebuild.

Colossus2 Computer
Working Replica of Colossus2 Computer

The trip was enriched by the fact that one of the boys (no names no pack drill) began his career working at Bletchley Park. The photo below is of him sat in front of one of the original radio listening devices that he used to operate.

original wireless listening set
An original wireless listening set being operated by an original listener

We were treated to stories of the old days including one that involved him swimming the lake in front of the mansion house at Bletchley Park having consumed 8 pints of Guinness in two hours in one Sunday lunchtime session. Bars up until fairly recently used to only stay open for that long on a Sunday.

Photo below is that self same lake. I like to think it is mostly original content on trefor.net 🙂 Bletchley Park needs money – please support them by visiting yourself.

lake at Bletchley Park
lake at Bletchley Park
Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

5 replies on “Bletchley Park – where it all started”

Can’t get broadband in there for love nor money though 🙁

I had a managed IT service client in there, and not only did they not support incoming connections (lack of fixed IP), bandwidth was ‘historical’ too 🙁

I trust they sorted it so the businesses there no longer have to use mobile broadband…

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