I spent a fascinating and hugely enjoyable afternoon at the Bletchley Park last Thursday at a fund-raising garden party. The event was supported by Google who had become involved after they agreed to put up part of the money to buy Alan Turing’s papers in February. As Peter Barron, Head of Communications explained ‘The point is that all of us have heroes. At Google our heroes are Alan Turing and the people who worked on breaking the codes at Bletchley Park. It was probably the most inspiring and uplifting achievement in scientific technology over the last hundred years. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that without Alan Turing, Google as we know it wouldn’t exist.’
I am ashamed to admit that whilst I knew something of Bletchley, I had never previously visited nor I had I quite appreciated its impact on the length and the outcome of the Second World War nearly 70 years ago. It is a fascinating place and at the end of the war it had grown from employing 200 staff to over 10,000 – many of whom were Wrens – who were all involved in cracking the Germans’ enigma ciphers.
It was a very humbling experience to speak to one of the veterans, Jean Valentine, who had started work at Bletchley 68 years ago. It was also amazing to see the original papers of Alan Turing whose team developed Colossus, a machine built to discover the settings that the Nazi encoding machines were using. Colossus is widely acknowledged as being the first electronic computer, making Bletchley the Garden of Eden for the computer industry.
Given I was there through my membership of Women in Technology, it was overwhelming to think of the work done there so many years ago – much of which was done by women – which had such a profound effect on our nation and Britain’s technological advances. I felt genuinely very moved and proud. It was a wonderful event and great to speak to friends and family of Bletchley veterans and to network with Google and others from the IT industry.
I would strongly urge others to visit Bletchley Park which is steeped in British history and which is, arguably, the birthplace of our technology industry today.
