Essay 02 Digital Revolution Place Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park

Essay 02: Digital Revolution - Place April 12, 2015 | Shekhar P Bagawde IXDS5503 Media History and Theory Professor: Jason Occhipinti

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History of Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park, Photo: Hut 6 at Trust - Bletchley Park Buckinghamshire

Bletchley Park was probably Britain’s best kept secret, until fairly recently. This was primarily because the secrecy surrounding the activities carried on the site during World War Two was of vital importance to Britain’s national security.

At Bletchley Park, an organization called the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) studied and devised methods to enable the Allied forces to decipher the military codes and ciphers that secured German, Japanese, and other Axis nation’s communications.

The team at Bletchley Park helped provide vital intelligence in advance of military operations. This site was also a landmark in the history that witnessed birth of the information age and industrialization of the code breaking processes enabled by machines such as the Turing / Welchman Bombe, and the world’s first electronic computer Colossus. (Bletchley Park Trust)

Essay 02:Digital Revolution - Place| LC4D Lindsey Wilson College | April 2015

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Bletchley Park

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Map Source: Nilfanion, Administrator on Commons, and also on the English Wikipedia Current Pi cture Sour ce: Draco2 July 20, 2 008 Flickr 005 , z

Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) was located in London and mainly staffed eighty literary scholars. There were no mathematicians until the fall of 1938, when Alan Turing went there.

By summer of 1939, as Britain prepared for war, the department began to actively hire mathematicians, using a contest that involved solving the Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle.

They relocated to the drab redbrick town of Bletchley.

The main reason for moving to Bletchley was because it was located at the juncture where the railway line between Oxford and Cambridge intersected with one from London to Birmingham.

This redbrick Victorian manor in the town of Bletchley, was fifty-four miles northwest of London, The British secretly started putting together a team of engineers and geniuses to break the German wartime codes.

Essay 02:Digital Revolution - Place| LC4D Lindsey Wilson College | April 2015

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Captain Ridley’s Shooting Party

In August 1938, a delegation from MI6 (British Intelligence Service) and the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), disguised as “Captain Ridley’s Shooting Party”, to hide their identity, visited the Bletchley Park Manor house. The owner actually wanted to demolish this Victorian Gothic building. (The Innovators book) To hide their identities and secret intentions, they brought with them one of the best chefs at the Savoy Hotel to cook their food and had an enjoying and relaxing time (Bletchley Park Trust website)

cret archive chley Park’s se et Bl ws Ne C Photo: BB

Essay 02:Digital Revolution - Place| LC4D Lindsey Wilson College | April 2015

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Breaking the German Enigma Code

Photo: By Karsten Sperling, Auckland, New Zealand

German Enigma Code The most famous of the cipher systems to be broken at the Bletchley Park was the Enigma.

The German Enigma mechanical rotors messages by using ing letters after

code was generated by a portable machine that had and electrical circuits. This device encrypted military a cipher. The cipher changed the formula for substitutevery keystroke.

The Polish and ‘Enigma’ The Polish had broken Engima is 1932 when the encoding machine was undergoing trials with the German Army. But during that time, the cipher altered only once every few months. As the World War II started, Germans added two more rotors and two more plug board connections to their Enigma machines. The Enigma now changed at least once a day, and it gave multi-million possible settings to choose from.

In July 1939, as the invasion of Poland became imminent, the Polish Army decided to inform the British, if they needed help to break Enigma.

(Breaking Enigma, Bletchley Park Trust) Essay 02:Digital Revolution - Place| LC4D Lindsey Wilson College | April 2015

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Cipher System - Enigma

Source: Enigma at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire - Bletchley Park Trust

‘The Green’ and the ‘Red’ keyAround January 23, 1923, the first operational breakthrough into Enigma happened when the team working under Dilly Knox, a classics professor from Cambridge, with the mathematicians John Jeffreys, Peter Twinn and Alan Turing disentangled the German Army administrative key, that became known as “The Green”.

The code breakers managed to crack the “Red” key used by the German officers coordinating air support for army units.There was a system devised whereby the code breakers were supported by other staff based in a neighboring hut, who converted these deciphered messages into intelligence reports.

(Breaking Enigma, Bletchley Park Trust)

Essay 02:Digital Revolution - Place| LC4D Lindsey Wilson College | April 2015

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Alan Turing and the ‘Bombe’

Source: Th e Bombe Ro om - Bletc hley

hoto: Source: Alan Turing P LLERY, NATIONAL PORTRAIT GA Telegraph Park Trust

Turing and ‘ the bombe’ More than 500 American ships had been sunk by German U-boats since the US had began sending supplies across the Atlantic to Europe in 1941 and naval authorities were growing impatient with Britain’s reluctance to share more than cursory details of progress at decrypting messages sent by the German high command and encoded by the Enigma machine (The Guardian, November 28, 2014 – The Imitation Game: how Alan Turing played dumb to fool US intelligence).

Turing was under strict instructions from MI6 to act as its official liar.

He and his team worked to create a sophisticated machine, which was called “the bombe”. This machine could decipher the encrypted messages by the improved Enigma, in particular naval orders that would reveal the deployment of German U-boats. The bombe exploited subtle weaknesses in the coding, including the fact that no letter could be enciphered as itself and there were certain repeated phrases that Germans used.

Turing and team had two operating bombes by August 1940 and by the end of the war they had built close to two hundred Essay 02:Digital Revolution - Place| LC4D Lindsey Wilson College | April 2015

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Wireless intercept stations Fictional ‘Boniface’ Most government officials and British naval officers believed the vital information that helped break Enigma was comingfrom an MI6 master spy codenamed “Boniface” who reportedly controlled a network of agents throughout Germany. Boniface and his team of spies were entirely fictional.

(The Guardian, November 28, 2014 – The Imitation Game: how Alan Turing played dumb to fool US intelligence)

Wireless intercept stations There was a real network of wireless intercept stations across Britain and in a number of countries, who listened to enemy’s radio messages and logged every letter or figure. These messages were sent to Bletchley Park to be translated and deciphered to get intelligence about the enemies.

Source: Enigma in use by Germans - Bletchley Park Trust

Essay 02:Digital Revolution - Place| LC4D Lindsey Wilson College | April 2015

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Colossus – the major milestone

Photo: Wrens (members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service) at Bletchley with Colossus, the world’s first electronic programmable computer, in 1942. (SSPL/Getty Images)

Colossus- the first electronic digital machine The bombe was an electromagnetic device with relay switches and rotors, instead of vacuum tubes and electronic circuits.

Germans had started coding important messages, such as orders from Hitler and his high command, with an electronic digital machine that used a binary system and was called Lorenz. The bombe, being an electromagnetic device was not able to decipher messages from Lorenz.The ‘Newmanry’ team based in Hut 11 was lead by Max Newman, a mathematician from Cambridge. They had an electronics wizard Tommy Flowers who had pioneered vacuum tubes, which the British called ‘valves’. This team produced the first Colossus machine by December 1943. that used 1,500 vacuum tubes. This machine initially could scan two loops of punched paper tapes using photo electric heads to compare all possible permutations of the two sequences. Later Flowers realized to use vacuum tubes to store at least one of the encrypted streams into the internal electronic memory of the machine, rather than comparing two punched papers.

A bigger version of Colossus was built by June 1944, which used 2,400 vacuum tubes. Within a year, Bletchley park produced eight more Colossus machines.Thus the British code breakers had built a fully electronic and digital computer.

Essay 02:Digital Revolution - Place| LC4D Lindsey Wilson College | April 2015

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Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s direction

In October 1941 after receiving a letter from some of the senior code breakers decrying the lack of resources being afforded them, Prime Minister Winston Churchill directed: “Make sure they have all they want extreme priority and report to me that this has been done.”

From that moment on Bletchley Park began receiving a huge influx of resources and a major building program ensued to create the space necessary to house the ever increasing workforce. (Industrialization of Code Breaking, Bletchley Park Trust) Photo: Bletchley Park - Hut 8 – poster of Winston Churchill “Let us go forward together”

by Elliot Brown, Flickr

Code Breakers and their contributions to the D-DayThe Code breakers made a vital contribution to D-Day - the Colossus decoded intercepts on who was about to launch the D-Day invasion. The breaking of the ciphers of the German Secret Intelligence Service allowed the British to confuse Hitler over where the Allies were to land. His decision to divert troops away from the Normandy beaches undoubtedly ensured the invasion’s success.

(Industrialization of Code Breaking, Bletchley Park Trust)

Source: The Veterans of Bletchley Park and it’s outstations - Bletchley Park Trust

Essay 02:Digital Revolution - Place| LC4D Lindsey Wilson College | April 2015

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The Women of Bletchley Park

Photo: By Gillian Ma son for Bl etchley

Park Trust

The Women of Bletchley Park Bletchley Park housed the British code breaking operation during World War II and was the birthplace of modern computing.

Historians estimate that the Code breakers’ efforts helped shorten the war by up to two years, saving countless lives.

At its peak, nearly twelve thousand people worked at Bletchley Park and its associated outstations; the majority of these were women aged between 18 and 24.

Women undertook all roles: The Y-Service that intercepted the enemy codes, the Dispatch Riders who couriered this information, Code breakers, those undertaking administrative or clerical work, Bombe and Colossus operators as well as cooks, cleaners, maintenance work and transportation staff.

(Google Cultural Institute and Bletchley Park, Bletchley Park Trust).

Code Breakers helped shorten the war Bletchley Park housed the British code breaking operation during World War II and was the birthplace of modern computing.

Historians estimate that the Code breakers’ efforts helped shorten the war by up to two years, saving countless lives.

Essay 02:Digital Revolution - Place| LC4D Lindsey Wilson College | April 2015

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Google Cultural Institute and Bletchley Park Colossus- the first electronic digital machine The Bletchley Park Trust is a partner of Google’s Cultural Insttute.

Google has long been keen to help preserve and promote the importance of Bletchley Park. As part of their ongoing support of the work of the Bletchley Park Trust, Google helps to bring its story to a wider online audience. (Google Cultural Institute and Bletchley Park, Bletchley Park Trust).

Bletchley Park Exhibits on Google Cultural Institute https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/u/0/collection/bletchley-park

Essay 02:Digital Revolution - Place| LC4D Lindsey Wilson College | April 2015

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References Bletchley Park Trust http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/ BBC UK - History: Bletchley Park http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/places/bletchley_park Flickr Stream - Draco2008 https://www.flickr.com/photos/draco2008/2247427390/in/photostream/ Bletchley Park Exhibits on Google Cultural Institute https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/u/0/collection/bletchley-park Flickr Stream - Elliot Brown Photo: Bletchley Park - Hut 8 – poster of Winston Churchill “Let us go forward together” https://www.flickr.com/photos/ell-r-brown/5123644725/ Map Source: Nilfanion, Administrator on Commons, and also on the English Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Keynes#/media/File:Buckinghamshire_UK_location_ map.svg Enigma - Photo by Karsten Sperling, Auckland, New Zealand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine#/media/File:EnigmaMachineLabeled.jpg Enigma - Photo by Karsten Sperling, Auckland, New Zealand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine#/media/File:EnigmaMachineLabeled.jpg

THANK YOU Essay 02: Digital Revolution - Place April 12, 2015 | Shekhar P Bagawde IXDS5503 Media History and Theory

Essay 02:Digital Revolution - Place| LC4D Lindsey Wilson College | April 2015