![]() ![]() ![]() The need to outsmart one’s enemy frequently led to ground-breaking innovations during World War II, yet the women who worked at Bletchley have often been overlooked in this story because, with the exception of three or four female cryptanalysts, the vast majority of top-end code-breakers during the war were men. It is a feat perhaps only rivalled by that of Tommy Flowers, the engineer who designed the even more advanced Colossus, the world’s first programmable computer. His outstanding role in the creation of the bombe machine, an electro-mechanical testing device essential for unravelling German Enigma encoded messages, was hugely significant. Britain’s codebreaking operation has been dominated by a male narrative – a star-studded cast of 20th century brain boxes, led by mathematician Alan Turing. ![]() 2019 was the 100th anniversary of GCHQ, once called the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS) and the brainchild behind one of World War II’s most famous institutions: Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire.ĭuring the war, Bletchley depended on the heft of a predominantly female workforce yet Joan Clarke, the code-breaking fiancée of Alan Turing (immortalised by Keira Knightley in the 2014 film The Imitation Game) is one of Bletchley’s very few famous woman. ![]()
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