A special set of computers was developed by British codebreakers in the years 1943–1945
Fifty miles northwest from London, Bletchley Park was the nexus of top-secret work during World War II. Here, under a complete cloak of secrecy, agents worked furiously around the clock to decode the enemy’s secret messages, notably those encrypted with the German Enigma machine.
Spread across the grounds were dozens of huts, each populated by agents focused on a particular strategic problem. Some worked to build equipment designed to break codes while others focused on finding patterns to decode messages the enemy was sending.
Agents were recruited based on the needs of the operation: mathematicians, scientists, intellectuals, and linguists were among those who were hired, with women making up about three-fourths of the workers. Alan Turing, Joan Clarke, and Dilly Knox were among those recruits.
Thrown together for years, the agents of Bletchley Park tried to live a normal life with their colleagues while enduring the ever-present burden of secrecy that extended another 30 years after the war. Sir Dermot Turing, Alan Turing's nephew, a trustee of Bletchley Park, and author of the The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park, shares the story of this unusual group of people whose mission was to save the world from destruction.
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