D25994. Alan Turin's office at Bletchley Park.
D25994. An unremarkable office furnished with unremarkable 1940s office furniture. But this is the office of the famous codebreaker Alan Turin at Bletchley Park, a top secret code-breaking centre around 50 miles north of London.
Thousands of messages were sent by the enemy using wireless transmitters and receivers – and many of these were picked up by secret British listening posts known as ‘Y’ Stations. These were situated across the U.K. and elsewhere in the world but the messages intercepted all ended up at Bletchley Park where the code-breakers would set to work trying to de-cypher what was basically just a jumble of letters.
Because of the sophisticated cypher machines in use by the enemy, it was thought that the scrambled secret messages would be completely safe and unreadable if intercepted by the British intelligence service. But unbeknown to the enemy, British code-breakers working at Bletchley Park were able to de-code the messages and had developed machines of their own to help speed up the process.
The top secret location is no longer a secret and Bletchley Park, code named ‘Station X’ during the war, is now open to the public and people can see and learn about the vital work carried out there which hastened the Allied victory and is said the have shortened the war by at least two years.
A visit is highly recommended and more details can be found here:
Monday, 17th October, 2022. Copyright © Ron Fisher 2022.
D25994. Alan Turin's office at Bletchley Park.
D25994. An unremarkable office furnished with unremarkable 1940s office furniture. But this is the office of the famous codebreaker Alan Turin at Bletchley Park, a top secret code-breaking centre around 50 miles north of London.
Thousands of messages were sent by the enemy using wireless transmitters and receivers – and many of these were picked up by secret British listening posts known as ‘Y’ Stations. These were situated across the U.K. and elsewhere in the world but the messages intercepted all ended up at Bletchley Park where the code-breakers would set to work trying to de-cypher what was basically just a jumble of letters.
Because of the sophisticated cypher machines in use by the enemy, it was thought that the scrambled secret messages would be completely safe and unreadable if intercepted by the British intelligence service. But unbeknown to the enemy, British code-breakers working at Bletchley Park were able to de-code the messages and had developed machines of their own to help speed up the process.
The top secret location is no longer a secret and Bletchley Park, code named ‘Station X’ during the war, is now open to the public and people can see and learn about the vital work carried out there which hastened the Allied victory and is said the have shortened the war by at least two years.
A visit is highly recommended and more details can be found here:
Monday, 17th October, 2022. Copyright © Ron Fisher 2022.