rmwesley

Spent New Year's Day looking around Bletchley Park which was absolutely fascinating. If you ever get a chance it is well worth seeing the history and immense intellectual effort associated with cracking the German WWII Enigma codes.

Bike pics to follow but I've included a few pics of the main house, an Enigma machine and a Typex machine if anyone is interested in these. I've got a short video of a replica Bombe in action also but not sure if I can upload this.

Bikes were displayed in a shed in the grounds and were behind a chain link so the quality of the pics isn't brilliant I'm afraid. Not sure if there is anything of real C&V interest or if they were just show bikes. Would be interested to hear back.


Bletchley Park main house


Enigma machine


Typex machine

rmwesley

rmwesley

mpetry912 

history drips from that place ! really the dawn of the modern computer industry.

there's a story about Allen Turing riding his bike to Bletchley Park and noticing the chain skipped because a bent chainring tooth hit a sticky link in the chain.

So he calculated the number of links and the number of chainring teeth and how far he'd have to ride to make them intersect. A simple factoring problem related to cryptography.

I hate those concrete slots ! Will bend your rim for sure.

Mark Petry
Bainbridge Island, WA USA

Bianchigirll 

Fabulous!! I'd love to see that place. I love movies about the code breaking efforts that went on there.

scarlson 

I wonder if some of those parts on those bikes that are normally chromed are painted black because of wartime chrome rationing. I know that was a thing here in the states with a lot of wartime production items like cameras.

dweenk

I would like to know the back story of the bikes. Were they government owned bikes for the Bletchley staff, or privately owned bikes left behind? It appears from the photos that they are left out in the weather - is that the case?

Great thread.

rmwesley

Thanks The bikes were covered above but in the open air. Unsure if they were "staged" or actually originals used to get around camp. I know my pictures aren't great but was hoping someone might be able to date them to the nearest decade. The rest of the museum and displays contained a mix of staged displays (but using artefacts from the correct era, e.g. typewriters, clothes, maps etc.) and completely authentic material (e.g. codebooks, letters, encrypted & unencrypted messages etc.). They had the original typescript of the decoded Zimmermann Telegram which brought the USA into WWII.

After doing a bit of googling it seems as though Alan Turing's bicycle mentioned above was / is displayed at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

dweenk

I am in no way an expert able to accurately date these bikes, but my best guess is that they are post war. I am thinking late 40's to early 60's. War bikes would not have had chrome parts (especially at a sensitive site like Bletchley). Perhaps they were nearly period correct and could be staged as an example.

Binky

I am pretty sure that the three people in the first picture, the one you took of the front of the main building at Bletchley, are me, my wife. and our friend Roger from Greenwich who drove us up there that day.

Bink.

Drillium Dude 

Wow! That's the definition of random

DD

Binky

Before the pandemic hit my wife and I were active international cat-sitters. We were cat-sitting in NOLA when the Covid thing started, and were scheduled to cat-sit in Stockholm in Sweden for the summer but Air Canada cancelled our flights.

We spent several winters cat-sitting for a woman in Greenwich, London, and got out for day trips to places like Bletchley as required. The best tomato soup to be had in the British Isles is served at the cafeteria at Bletchley Park.

Bink

Hondo6

Minor quibble: the Zimmerman Telegram brought the US into World War I, not World War II.

British cryptography has a far longer history than Bletchley Park - it extends back to at least World War I and probably before. (Bletchley Park became the center for such activity shortly before World War II if I recall correctly.) Prior to that, such work was done elsewhere. In particular, the Zimmerman Telegram was broken at the British Admiralty's Room 40 operation in London.

For anyone interested, the Wikipedia articles on "Bletchley Park", "Zimmerman Telegram", and "Room 40" provide a good intro and some background on all 3 subjects. (I'd post links, but per Bike Forums rules I'm "not old enough yet". [smile]) Many other sources exist that provide far more details for those interested.

Not trying to one-up anyone. I just have a keen interest in history, and also in this subject in particular. Just wanted to set the record straight.

The Golden Boy 

I’m trying to think of an American equivalent to Bletchley Park- did the US COINTEL operation have a center like Bletchley Park?

rmwesley

Only just spotted this... What an amazing co-incidence. Makes you think what other co-incidences & sliding doors moments we have in our lives.

If only we'd known, we could have gone for a tomato soup together

Hondo6

Golden Boy:

US similar activities were the Army's Signal Intelligence Service operations at Arlington Hall Station (later absorbed into the National Security Agency; broke the Venona code and uncovered the Soviet espionage against the Manhattan Project) and US Navy Commander Joseph Rochefort's efforts at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu (which broke the Japanese codes that led to US victory at Midway). Both were instrumental, and the Army's effort IMO appears to have rivaled that at Bletchley Park in terms of scope. The Wikipedia articles on both are good intros.

But the Bletchley Park effort was probably vastly more effective overall. After all, they had Alan Turing - and geniuses like that are kinda rare. (smile)