II. Bletchley Park

When the war broke out, the Government Code and Cypher School was moved from London to Bletchley, a town about 80km away from the capital. There, in an old Victorian mansion, gathered professors, students, chess masters, museologists, archivists and even Egyptologists. Namely: anyone who may be able to help in deciphering the Enigma.

Alan Turing arrived at Bletchley on 4 September 1939, just one day after Great Britain officially entered the war. As a renowned mathematician, he shortly began working as a cryptologist.

What differentiated Bletchley Park from similar agencies, was that the Government Communications Headquarters was full of people like Turing – eccentric intellectuals. The diversity of Bletchley employees and their open policy for individuality made the place extraordinarily welcoming. This atmosphere and a relatively lax approach to hierarchy made it so Turing’s ideas, although scrutinised at first, had a chance to be realised.

One of these ideas – building a cryptologic bomb – would later make history.