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Thursday, May 31, 2018:
Mark and Paula
traveled to
Bletchley Park, about 1-1/2 hours north of London. This is the place where secret German communications were decoded during World War Two. |
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It was a
country estate for the wealthy, but was turned over to the British
government for the project. |
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The original
residence has been preserved as a museum, along with many smaller outbuildings that were used by the code breakers. |
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Many shortwave
radio listeners, throughout the country, monitored German Morse Code
transmissions. They heard and wrote down five letter groups of letters, which make no sense to the listener. |
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The Germans
were using
Enigma machines to encode and decode secret military messages.
Germans assumed the coded messages could not be deciphered by the Allies. They were wrong! |
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Mathematicians
and out-of-the-box thinkers, led by
Alan
Turing, created machines to decode the gibberish. There are millions of code keys, only one of which would work on a given day to decipher messages. Some 10,000 people were involved in the project, which was a major contributor to the Allies winning World War Two. |
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All of the
original machines were destroyed after the war. A local group is
recreating them to preserve the history. |
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There is a book
by E.H Hinsley and Alan Stripp that has more information on this story.
You can find it on Amazon or other places where books are sold. |
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Just some of
the radio receiving equipment run by historians. |
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The nearby
British National Museum
of Computing showed off the early Colossus Computer using vacuum
tubes. It is this 1950s technology that is billed as the world's first electronic computer. |
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The
Radio Society of Great
Britain has an amateur radio station at Bletchley Park. Antennas on a roof are a good way to find it. |
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Keith Hotchkiss
G0FEA was the operator on duty that day. He let Mark W0MH operate
on 20 meter (14 MHz) sideband. Contacts were made to amateur radio stations in Poland, Croatia, and Greece. Lots of fun. |
Quote of the day:
Got the royal treatment at this place. Mark
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Questions, Comments? Email Mark Persons teki@mwpersons.com |
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More about Gilbert Lodge |
page last edited 07/20/2018
