Dr Sue Black | Carpool

numerically dyslexic and you are very clever at coming up with those things, so 53 is the mineral smiles and one is, yes, but come on. I think I want to explain to you because I think I met you for the first time. You actually parked, yeah, yeah, which was amazing and surprising. audience really big audience yes, the tickets sold out very quickly yes yes I think I want to explain: well, even young people in this country may not have a full understanding of the story, but also for many foreign viewers what is Bletchley Park and what role it played in the last war what is it and what and 90 what role did it play in the war but then what did it lead to what is part of the reason why people can see this is such a vital part of that story so it was code breaking.

It's a pleasure, the code breakers worked during the Second World War so I found this amazing because before I went I had the idea that Bletchley Park was this place. I only knew a little about it, so the code breakers and I just thought about guys in their 40s in tweed jackets sitting around a pipe doing the Times crossword, that's what I thought it would be, so I discovered the first time I went there there were actually over 10,000 people. half as much as the women, so I was very happy, yes, yes, I was an absolute revelation.

I think Eisenhower said that the work that was done there would shorten the war by two years and at that time about eleven million people were dying a year, so it's just you know, incomprehensible, yeah, I'm potentially saving 22 million laughs. The work that was done there, but what happened was at the end of the war, Churchill ordered well, I mean, the whole time they were there, they were all told they wouldn't have to do it. Say anything, so husbands and wives did not. They were both working now and people only knew who was working right next to them in the same house or in the same area and they didn't know they were there, they only knew a small part of it. of the process, apart from a couple of people, obviously, you had an overview of everything, most people only knew the small part that they were doing, they didn't know where things came from, where they were going, you know, it helps write this part. of this incredible chain of people working messages that were being sent by the Nazis by the Nazis in the army.

I think I'm from Japan too so many were experts on the German linguist course and identity linguists so yeah I mean I've met some of the people there, just amazing even now and they kept quiet about it . I didn't know it when I was a kid and my goodness, you know, he was very active in World War II. Okay, presumably I'm getting information from, but. he wouldn't have known, yeah, so Churchill called them the geese that laid the golden eggs but they never called and then there's the Enigma machine, I mean, I know it's connected to that, but they had, so the repair machines were used in Germany to detect and they actually cracked the Enigma code, so there were three published mathematicians who worked on it and I think the French also had something to do with it and then I think all of that happened to Bletchley Park.

Well, you know, they had a lot of information, but they didn't have all the information. It all has to do with the rotors inside the Enigma machine, making it look like a typewriter. Yes, these rotors were changed every day. so you didn't know where they started and that made everything much more complicated because every day you had to figure out what the correct rotor configuration was, so even if you had the machine and you didn't have the You better start with the code to put it, but if it was indeed the birthplace of computing in a new way, does that mean that's what really emerged?

Yeah, Colossus was invented by a guy named Tommy Flowers and that was picked up. to the park to help with the code breaking efforts and that is the first programmable digital computer and no one else the Americans haven't done it the Russians and it's like everyone talks about the first computer but that's how you define your computer and to Let them know that there are I don't know how many but there are many contenders for the first announcer but I think the thing with this could be that it was the first programmable digital computer yes, that's true, yes, I also think that the An extraordinary turn with Alan Turing, who was, obviously, at that time, all the code breakers were not very well-known people, I thought maybe in their circles because they were taken from universities.

Yeah, I think some of them were as young as 16, so they didn't even leave. for you last year it would have been kind of math, yeah, math, cryptography, linguistic languages ​​and then of course all the workforce that was there to do, you know, generate all these answers using like the bomb machines and Colossus is the bomb machine was caught. It wasn't a bomb-making machine, yes, but the first time it was an emu bomb, yes, and at the end of the war Churchill ordered them all to be destroyed, so I think yes, I think actually some machines were to GCHQ. but I guess that wasn't home until recently, so everyone thought everything had been destroyed, so how do you rebuild something that there's no evidence of?

And I think there are just a couple of photos and some work. I think it's made up and fragments of maybe a blueprint or something. I don't have exactly what he said, but it was like a mini shopping center, there is no more information, they managed to rebuild it and many of the parts, I think. The original machine was made of telephone exchange material, like switching systems, so they managed to find a lot of parts like that and they also had to make some custom parts because now we use the metric system and some. of the I don't know, not sports, whatever, they wouldn't be the right size, but they're just amazing, you know, so I walked into a room that was filled mostly with women without ladies, so I thought, well, you know, I wonder that.

We're going to talk about the same thing, you know, because I want to know how they did it at Bletchley Park. You know what it was like to work there, so we sat down and talked to several women and had some amazing things. We chatted, you know, talking about things they did there, which was really interesting, but for me the most interesting things were the ones that really helped me understand what it felt like for them, yeah, so I said, you know what? Did you do it outside of work? One of them said to another. Remember that time we stole the Vickers bike to go to it?

Baby, a lot of the women were aware of the women, you know they were girls, yeah, I think they had 17 or 18 wives. young on something we used to go topless sunbathing on the roof we used to fly and swoop over the top to get a good view oh great, so will RAF pilots used to get in trouble but you know that so , so these 18 year old girls didn't say anything to anyone. No, it's extraordinary that that would cause some level of secrecy to be maintained, but also to maintain it after the war. I mean, there would have been people who would have later had families, young children, grandchildren. never say anything, yeah, some of the top code breakers, I think one of them, I'm not very good with names so I can't name the members, one of the top code breakers died without more than one, yes, but Kelsey Griffin, who is director of operations. in Bletchley Park, you know you walk with her, she tells you these stories of all these people who work and then you like to walk around crying, yeah, because it's such touching things, you know, it's like this guy who she didn't tell her um His father said something like oh, you never got as big as when his father was on his deathbed and yet he didn't tell him what he had done and that he had been one of the magic breakers at Bletchley Park. they just get goosebumps, they're just talking about it, and you know, this huge sacrifice really yes, there they saw as if they were their stories of couples who had worked at Bletchley Park and got married without knowing that they both worked at Bletchley Park never said no, maybe it was official that they were right to say something and then you wonder and then you know they probably weren't there, they were 25 and then when they're 55 you know suddenly the band gets up and one of They muster up the courage to say to the other: Sir, do you know why I worked at Bletchley Park, what influence it had on the development of computing and computers, you know, after the war, there were many people who worked there, they went to Manchester again being very bad with the names exactly who did what yes, yes, I think it's like a lot of these people and I think my applause, you know, some people realize that what he was doing and saying was surprising and fundamental in that moment. and he was gay, yes, his parents had quite healthy homophobia, so a gay mathematician, a brainiac at GCHQ, wouldn't have been one.

I can only listen to my TED talk, but then, I mean, what a difficult life and I mean he was young and he didn't even do it. He talked to himself with me, yes, but I think the jury is still out. I was as to how he died, you mean, no, as to whether it was suicide, relax, right? I can see that some people said that he quite often did experiments to be able to do it. having had cyanide as part of what he was doing he had it in his hands and then he ate the apple he forgot until his hands or something like that it was suicide, yeah, so no, we don't know, it's true, you know, kids , yeah, and I think I see Max.

Newman testified at the Cheering trial in his defense, true, because he was cheering, he was a friend of the father, true, because he forgot that when he was at the trial, but because of his homosexuality, I guess attitudes changed, okay, but just the idea that someone ever some people see very Recently, both here and in the United States, I basically said that people are not that bothered and they are not important, which is, yeah, the best thing ever, actually, of a way that is not important and you judge people by what they like, not by what they want to say.

It was also so absurd that if you were gay and they arrested you for it and sent you to prison, yeah, and that's what you have to choose between going to prison or chemical castration, so he chose chemical castration through breasts . I mean, can you imagine how that makes me feel guilty? It was also the hypocrisy, it was so colossal because a lot of British people, you know, the security services and everyone, they just kept low, you didn't talk like a human, you worked and so on, I. He asked Newman if he had any memory of applauding, so he said, you know something like yes, because he came to our house often.

You know, a family friend who was coming of age was an incredible runner and also a marathon runner. Wow, I think he almost qualified for the Olympics in his day, this is my, you know, if there ever was a man who was kind of vital. Oh God, you seem to be good at everything, so it was he, who, so acclaimed, ran from his house to Newman's hands. I think one early morning. he said and something like 12 miles man and when he got there he found that the family was not seeing the abundance from the door, so he and he had nothing on him to leave a message, so he got a leaf and a stick, this is What she knows, so there's so many rounds about it, yes, now she's a bit bored of watching, is that the Second World War would have been allowed to do this in the old days, where this is Bletchley Park, she says Welcome to Bletchley Park.

Of course, I don't remember any of this, so if I was there, it was a different entry. It was there? Yeah, if you got my greeting, well, look at Simon, okay, sure, thanks. Okay, that's very good for you. You know safety and you can. get nowhere well that's brilliant thank you very much look that's really thank you really good great adventure lots of ran over some veterans at the last minute to use them very good excellent can we have lunch but thank you very much for participating? Bye bye.