Now on to day 3 in London… And it was also my parents Anniversary. Love you both.. Miss you Dad !
Today was our one trip out of London. Our goal was to head to Blechley Park, the home of the English secret service whose mission it was to decrypt secret German communications during the Second World War.
We took the tube to Euston Station then took a train to Blechley Park near Milton Keynes.. The trip was only about 35 min.
Wed misstimed our visit a bit as the museum of computing was not open on Friday.. btut the larger Bletchly park museum was open.. and that turned out to be about as miuch as we could fit into our brains.. The museum is really impressive. Wesley Park started in the 1930s as a secret outpost where English intelligence would gather wireless Morse code communications from the Germans, Japanese and Italians and decrypt them using a variety of methods… Most of them intensely manual. The place was chosen because it was a nondescript rundown manor house. It was retrofit with all sorts of offices and Barricks and canteens… And at one point employed more than 5000 people!… Day in and day out messengers came in on motorcycles carrying written transcriptions of intercepted Morse code messages.… There was a large array of scientists as well as military people there working on cracking the ever more sophisticated codes. The museum is laid out as it was left… Sprawling with a bunch of mix of architecture some of it very old some of it dating from the second world war. You really got a sense of what it was like to be there. We took a guided tour through some of the grounds… We saw the original manor house which had the first 150 people working in it.… We toured the radio center and large parts of the museum where you could see where people translated codes filed them punched cards etc. It really gave you a sense of what it was lik. There were some amazing displays of equipment and personal affects of some of the people who worked here. The most famous of which was Alan Turing .
I particulalry liked seeign the equipment including the German Enigma encoding engines and the first digital computers built buy the british to help decode the ciphers. I loved the stories of how the crypologists worked through the complicated moving codes.. It was often an error.. like a retransmitted message that provided the crucial clue needed to decode a secret message.
I particularly liked learning more about Alan Turing. He was ana mazing mathematician and cryptographer a…. hich most folks know.. but he was also one of the worlds first computational biologists. He had soem very interestign theores abotu evolutionary biology. He was a key contributer to the computation engines used on code breaking… His contribiutions to the world were amazing .. but would have been so much more if he’d been allowed ot coninue his work. He was prosecuted asa homosexual and subject to horrible medical treatments to try to ‘fix’ him.. THe treatments made it impossible for him to work.. he chose to end his own life at age 42.. such a sad story..!
Visiting Bletchly was both fun and exhausting.. It was very cool dropping back into the time where the fate of so many people depended on math !
We grabbed a bite and grabbed the next train back to London
We went eight from our train to the Museum of Novelty Automation . It is a small place that shows the amazing contraptions from Artist and Inventor Tim Hunkin.. We first came to know his work from the wonderful water clock that once was in Neils Yard.. We used to visit when Diane and I lived in the UK from 1984-86 . The clock is no longer there.. but this museum had more than a dozen of Hunkins peices.. >. You baught tokens..and used them to interact with the exhibits.. they were so amazing and fun ! FOr example.. you put you hand in a cage where an animated dog luncges and growlss a, slobers and snaps at your hand.. the longer you keep your hand in there .. the more you win. Or a game you play by steering a runnign man through a forest of cell phone zombies.. people walkign while looking at the phones… Or another where you put an object into a try and an automata descides whenter its art or not.. or an eclipse booth, or nuclkear control rod insertion gamwe with a defective clw.. or … or .. or…. .. it was nuts !
We grabbed dinner at a fish and chips place that gabe had found on TikTok.. it was soooo good.. Mushy peas and all !
Then Gabe left to explore the city a bit on his own.. while diane and I went to have a drink with a freind of a friend Cath G> Cathy is a good friend of my Friend David. They are both many things.. including undersea explorers. tHey met while workign with Ballard on the re-discovery of the Titanic !
It was wonderful getting to know Cathy.. Her husband Tom died a year again.. and she was still working though grief. She is back out in the world. SHe told us about some of the cool projects shes working on.. an iron age cite that is half submerged of the coast of greecwe.. and an undersea city off the coast of napoli.. WHat an amazing person.. and what an amazing life !
We really enjoyed hanign out with Cathy !
We caught an uber home.. what a full day !
nite all nite sam
-me