BLETCHLEY PARK

Domain	Definition
Computing	Bletchley Park A country house and grounds some 50 miles North of London, England, where highly secret work deciphering intercepted German military radio messages was carried out during World War Two. Thousands of people were working there at the end of the war, including a number of early computer pioneers such as Alan Turing. The nature and scale of the work has only emerged recently, with total secrecy having been observed by all the people involved. Throughout the war, Bletchley Park produced highly important strategic and tactical intelligence used by the Allies, (Churchill's "golden eggs"), and it has been claimed that the war in Europe was probably shortened by two years as a result. An exhibition of wartime code-breaking memorabilia, including an entire working Colossus, restored by Tony Sale, can be seen at Bletchley Park on alternate weekends. The Computer Conservation Society (CCS), a specialist group of the British Computer Society runs a museum on the site that includes a working Elliot mainframe computer and many early minicomputers and microcomputers. The CCS hope to have substantial facilities for storage and restoration of old artifacts, as well as archive, library and research facilities. Telephone: Bletchley Park Trust office +44 (908) 640 404 (office hours and open weekends). (1998-12-18). Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Specialty Definition: Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park is a stately home in Buckinghamshire in England, about 50 miles north of London.

During World War II, Bletchley Park was the site of the United Kingdom's efforts to break Axis ciphers, particularly the Enigma and Lorenz ciphers used by Nazi Germany.

The Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS), the intelligence bureau responsible for interception and decryption of foreign transmissions, moved into the Park in 1938. The radio station constructed in the park for its use was given the codename "Station X" -- this term is often erroneously applied to the code-breaking efforts at Bletchley as a whole. Station X was soon moved south to Whaddon Hall, to prevent any attention being drawn to the Bletchley site.

Early visitors described themselves as members of Captain Ridley's shooting party. Later, the code-name for the project was "ULTRA".

Among the famous mathematicians and cryptanalysts working there, perhaps the most influential and best-known was Alan Turing. In 1943, the special-purpose electronic computer Colossus was designed at Bletchley Park. This computer was used to crack the Lorenz cipher.

At the height of efforts it is thought that more than 10,000 people were working at Bletchley Park during the war.

The Bletchley Park effort was comparable in influence to other WW II-era technological efforts, such as the crytographic work at Arlington Hall, development of microwave radar at MIT's Radiation Lab and the Manhattan Project's development of nuclear weapons.

At the end of the war, much of the equipment used and its blueprints were destroyed by order of Churchill. Though thousands of people were involved in the decoding efforts, the participants remained silent for decades about what they had done during the war; it was only in the 1970s that the work at Bletchley Park was revealed to the general public.

The Bletchley Park trust has been founded to further the maintenance of the site as a museum devoted to the codebreakers.

External links

Bletchley Park Museum

Frequency of Internet Keywords: BLETCHLEY PARK

Anagrams: BLETCHLEY PARK

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-b-c-e-e-h-k-l-l-p-r-t-y"
	-3 letters: bellyacher.
	-4 letters: archetype, bellyache, rakehelly, teacherly.
	-5 letters: becarpet, bleacher, bracelet, calypter, cellaret, clypeate, harebell, helpable, kreplach, latchkey, leathery, praelect, pterylae, rakehell, rectally, retackle, teleplay, typeable.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.