We learned about Bletchley Park as a place to visit just a week and a half ago, so we went soon after learning about it. Some of you might already know about it or have remembered hearing about it when you watched The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, one of a group of cryptographers who helped defeat the Nazis by cracking the code the Nazis used in their messages. Although we had seen this movie, we hadn't remembered the location of where the cryptographers worked as it isn't a prominent part of the film, but we did watch the movie after we got back from the Park as we felt it would be more meaningful. It definitely was, but we also ended up realising what the fictitious parts of the movie were that were clearly added for the director's purposes. One thing is that, while Keira Knightley plays her role well, there was no woman involved in the group that happened to crack the "Enigma" codes, the machine that the Nazis used to send and receive their encrypted messages. The other thing that is noteworthy is that the movie makes it look like Turing alone was responsible for cracking the code with the machine he created, when in reality, it was a team effort--and not the one depicted in the movie where eventually the team supports him in the end after hating him at first, but each had specific roles and specialisations that allowed them to be effective as a team. Each of their strengths added together allowed the Enigma machine's code to be cracked.
My guess about Keira Knightley's role, however, is that it's meant to be symbolic of the invaluable contribution of women to signals intelligence during WWII. However, if the director wanted to be truly symbolic, he would have had to have a team that was 75% women and only 25% men, because that's actually the ratio of women to men that were involved in the work at Bletchley Park. I think this ratio is noteworthy, considering how computing science became one of those STEM subjects that have a hard time attracting girls and women these days. My mom shared a Facebook post with me a couple of months ago, long before I went to Bletchley, let alone knew about it, that included a link to this NPR episode that discusses how gender stereotyping in media and marketing led to coding and computers being viewed as something for boys and how women ended up declining in numbers in this field. What a tragedy!
The photo album that I've included is a lot of reading. It's more for those that are interested and can understand what it's talking about. You can sift through and see some interesting artefacts and read a few plaques, but I included some of the longer explanations mainly because what I can understand is interesting, but some of it is over my head, and I might not be able to summarise it here adequately for those that do understand. We didn't get to finish seeing everything because it's quite a large park, and even in 5 hours, could not see all the buildings with things in them to see, but luckily the admission fee you pay is good for a year, so we've held onto our tickets so we can return to finish. In one photo you'll see the mansion where it all began, where they initially started working before it grew into a huge intelligence collection venue, and they serve afternoon tea there, for which it's recommended that you book in advance. We didn't know about this offering before we got there, so we'd like to take advantage of that next time we go as well.
Before I post the album, I should mention that the park does include a section that is dedicated to Turing. I mentioned above that he wasn't the main one responsible for cracking the code, as depicted in the movie about his life, but it wasn't intended to diminish his contributions to the field of computing science as a whole. He was a genius whose work laid the foundations for the computers we use today, and his life was ended young at age 41 when he killed himself because he had to go through chemical castration to avoid jail time after being convicted for being gay, at a time when being so was illegal in the UK. He received posthumous apologies from both the Prime Minister and a full pardon from the Queen since 2009.
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