Oct 15 - Bletchley Park

 Just finished dinner.  Had a Lettuce and Tomato salad with olives and Caesar dressing; then Cheese Tortelini with Tomato and Basil Sauce and some chicken I added.  Topped it off with a Chocolate pudding.  And a beer of course.

Today's kitchen hint.  Remember the cheap airline sox I'm using as a dishcloth?  Well, they also work as pot holders.

Here's me modelling my new potholders:

In the comments somebody suggested I should put a selfie into the blog.  So, I killed 2 birds with one stone - a kitchen hint and a selfie.

So, today was Bletchley Park.  Bletchley Park was an estate north of London that, at the beginning of WW2, was taken over and made into a secret facility to perform codebreaking of the enemy's secret communications.  One of it's most famous members was Alan Turing, a brilliant mathematician that conceived much of the mathematics that the codebreaking was based on and he also laid the foundations of modern computing theory.

By the end of the war, this top secret facility had almost 9,000 people (of which 75% were womwn) working there doing vital, top secret work for the allies.

Enough history.  Here's a few photos without too much theory (which I loved).

Bletchley Park (BP) is about 50 miles north of London so I got a train there.  The train was not too busy so I sat by the window and tried to get some photos of the countryside.

A nice bit of rolling countryside.

Looks like a bit of an estate.  Not sure what the wall to the right was.  I missed a lot of it with my photo.

One of the many bridges we went under.  I don't how they would do in a good sized earthquake.

I had to take a picture of this station.   Does anybody know anything about or been to Leighton Buzzard?

I just had to look it up opn the Internet:

So now we all know about Leighton Buzzard.

I made it to Bletchley and was walkin the short distance to BP.  Where else but England would you see rental electric scooters parked along the road?  There was only one there when  I returned at 4 p.m.

I arrived and paid my entrance fee.  For the concession (old fart) fee of $25.50 I now have a year's fee admission and a very nice Souvenir Guidebook.  Also included was a guided tour of the grounds by a delighful gentleman who was informative and

as funny as can be.  Best value tour I've taken so far.

Front view of the mansion.  

Glass ceiling inside

Beautiful woodwork

Commander Denniston's office.  He set up and ran the GC&CS until 1942.  He also recruited "men of the professor type" such as university mathematicians (eg. Alan Turing) who were excellent codebreakers.

Test question:  What does the GC&CS stand for.  I'll try to remember to give the answer a couple of photos further along.

The mansion did not have space for all the people required, so a number of additional buildings were constructed, with fancy names like Huts 1 - 12 and Blocks A - E.  A lot of the people who worked here were housed in the nearby towns & villages which unfortunately had space as many of the men were away at war.  

Block 'B.'  I actually never took any poicture of the huts (plain wooden stuctures).  Believe me, they were no screaming hell either.

Alan Turing's office in Hut 8.  Look at the radiator:  he chained his cup to it, apparently to prevent theft.  He had some other eccentric habits.

Oh, yeah:  GC & CS stands for  
Government Code & Cypher School.

That's enough about the buildings at Bletchley.  I will only add a couple of photos about the equipment and technical stuff.  

A German Navy Enigma Machine, captured and brought to BP along with it's code books.  This was the main German cypher mqachine.

A link to learn more about them:

https://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/our-story/enigmas-of-bletchley-park/

A wartime picture of a Bombe machine, used to help decipher the Enigma coded messages.  It was an electro-mechanical machine and had to be 'programmed' by reconnecting cables in the rear of the machine.  The reconnecting was largely done by women.

A phenomenal article abouthow this works.  I'll read it to put me to sleep:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe

Last machine: The Colossus computer.

A wartime picture of WRENS operating it.

It used 'thermionic valves' (vaccuum tubes) to aid in the cryptoanalysis of the Lorenz (upgrded Enigma) cipher machine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer

I could of totally nerded out on all the 'stuff' here, but I will spare you.

After a piece of carrot cake and a Latte I headed back to the rail station and the trip back to London.  Needless to say, you can see I thoroughly enjoyed this tour.