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Martin Postranecky | 21 May 12:54
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Bletchley Park Trust "Disappointed" as Government Rejects Appeal for Support

20 May 2009

Bletchley Park Trust "Disappointed" as Government Rejects Appeal for Support
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Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall's petition in the House of Lords yesterday 
asking, "Her Majesty's Government what support they will give to the 
restoration and development of Bletchley Park" was rejected by Lord 
Davies of Oldham, the Deputy Chief Whip of the House of Lords.

Lord Davies responded, "Both English Heritage and the Housing 
Communities Agency have provided advice and funding for the development of 
the Bletchley Park site.  In 2008 English Heritage provided a grant of 
£330,000 towards buildings conservation repairs and has offered to 
provide a further £300,000 for the area. The Housing Communities 
investment is towards the purchase and redevelopment of the land on the 
site and related infrastructure."

"The fundraising effort is indeed going pretty well, and it is to improve 
both the buildings and museum facilities. Visitor numbers are rising very 
rapidly and its business plan shows it will be self-sufficient once 
capital building work is completed. They are suffering considerable 
difficulty in surviving in the interim,"  Baroness McIntosh responded.

"Could he encourage his friends at the Department for Culture, Media and
Sport to reconsider their willingness to support this project ?"  she
asked.

Lord Davies once again rejected this with, "The issue with regard to 
support for Bletchley Park is a complex one.  The Bletchley Park Trust
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Mark Baldwin | 12 May 18:46

COLOSSUS by Tony Sale

The previous impression having sold out, 
we commissioned a new printing of 
COLOSSUS 1943-1996 by Tony Sale.
New stock was delivered last week.

Apart from a couple of minor updates, 
the text and illustrations are unchanged, 
and the price remains at £3.

Mark Baldwin
M & M BALDWIN

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Mark Baldwin | 12 May 18:46

CODEBREAKERS presentations

FYI

I shall be delivering presentations on 
ENIGMA, BLETCHLEY PARK & THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC,
followed by a hands-on demonstration of 4-rotor Enigma machine,
on the following dates:

May 20 BOURNEMOUTH [free entry]
May 27 HENLEY
June 25 WELWYN GDN CITY
Sep 9 Clee St Margaret (nr LUDLOW)
Sep 21 DERBY [free entry]
Nov 16 BRUSSELS

Further details available on request, or at

www.enigmatix.uk

Any publicity which group members might be able to give these events would be welcomed.

Thanks!

Mark Baldwin

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David Williams | 5 May 15:24

Enigma at auction

All,
I received notification from a friend in the "States" of a three rotor Enigma machine up for auction over
there. For more information please visit www.rauantiques.com and follow the link. It is claimed to be one
of only two used in Czechoslovakia during WW2.
David Williams
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Martin Postranecky | 15 Apr 22:05
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THE TIMES OBITUARY : Professor Jack Good

From The Times
April 16, 2009

OBITUARY : Professor Jack Good : mathematician and wartime codebreaker
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The mathematician Jack Good played a key role among the codebreaking team 
at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. He went on to help to build 
one of the first computers, was the father of a branch of modern 
statistics and contributed to the development of artificial 
intelligence..../snip

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6100314.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00523/Good_185x295_523274a.jpg
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Martin Postranecky | 10 Apr 17:17
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OBITUARY : Professor Jack Good

10 Apr 2009

OBITUARY : Professor Jack Good
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Professor Jack Good, who died on April 5 aged 92, made fundamental 
contributions to probability theory, drawing on ideas developed while 
working as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park during the Second World War; 
later on he advised Stanley Kubrick on the computer with a mind of its own 
in the film 2001 - A Space Odyssey, and popularised the board game Go.

A statistician by training and a county chess champion, Good was recruited 
to Bletchley Park from Cambridge in 1941. By the time he arrived, the 
German Air Force and Army Enigma codes had been broken, but their naval 
Enigma code remained frustratingly difficult to decrypt - a major 
problem at a time when supply lines from North America were being 
threatened by U-boats.

Initially Good was assigned to Hut 8 working with Alan Turing and Hugh 
Alexander, who were already using machines known as "bombes" to discover 
the Enigma wheel settings, based on complex algorithmic "cribs" devised by 
Turing using a branch of probability theory known as Bayesian statistics. 
During this early period, the mathematician Max Newman, working in another 
hut, had established a program to use electronic methods of decipherment 
and had recruited Donald Michie, an Oxford classicist, to help him.

In 1943 Good moved from Hut 8 to the "Newmanry" to work with Michie on the 
use of machine methods for decrypting a German cipher system known as 
"Fish". The first machine, appropriately christened the "Heath Robinson", 
used vacuum tubes, was highly unreliable, and thus required extensive
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Martin Postranecky | 29 Mar 20:54
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'BOMBE-Rebuild' article & photos in Mail on Sunday

29th March 2009

The Wider View :
Nazi codebreaker which shortened the Second World War by two years
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By Mail On Sunday Reporter

The rows of silver dials and tangle of scarlet wires look more like a 
telephone exchange.

But this is the inside of the Turing Bombe, the part-electronic, 
part-mechanical code-breaking machine and forerunner of the modern 
computer, which cracked 3,000 messages a day sent on Nazi Enigma machines 
during the Second World War.

There were 210 such bookcase-like Bombes that gave Britain advance warning 
of Hitler's plans and shortened the conflict by two years..../snip/


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1165535/
The-Wider-View-Nazi-codebreaker-shortened-Second-World-War-years.html

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/28/article-1165535-041C8EA9000005DC-759_634x418_popup.jpg

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/28/article-1165535-0412A5EA000005DC-1_634x377_popup.jpg

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/28/article-1165535-0412A762000005DC-903_634x425_popup.jpg

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/28/article-1165535-041C7D35000005DC-708_634x448_popup.jpg
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Martin Postranecky | 20 Mar 20:56
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Neighbours give Bletchley a cash lifeline

Saturday, 14 March 2009

Neighbours give Bletchley a cash lifeline
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Site of Allied wartime code-breaking operations receives £600,000 boost

By Amol Rajan

Bletchley Park, site of the code-breaking efforts of Allied Forces in the 
Second World War, has been granted a funding lifeline after residents in 
Milton Keynes answered a challenge from English Heritage.

The Buckinghamshire mansion, which some historians credit as being the 
birthplace of the modern computer, needed extra cash for the "essential 
backlog of maintenance and urgent repairs".

In November last year English Heritage awarded the centre £300,000 for 
repairs to its roof and demanded a similar expression of commitment from 
other organisations.

Simon Thurley, the chief executive of English Heritage, said: "When we 
announced our initial £300,000 grant last year for urgent roof repairs to 
the Grade II-listed mansion, I laid down the gauntlet by pledging another 
£100,000 each year over three years if matching funding could be 
found.../snip/


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/neighbours-give-bletchley-a-cash-lifeline-1644895.html
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Martin Postranecky | 18 Mar 19:57
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Watch now : Jerry Roberts' codebreaking talk

Watch now : Jerry Roberts' codebreaking talk
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17 March 2009

Captain Jerry Roberts, UCL German alumnus and Second-World-War 
codebreaker, spoke at UCL on 11 March 2009 about his experiences breaking 
the "Tunny" code at Bletchley Park : a much more complex machine than 
the better-known "Enigma".

Captain Roberts delivered his talk - "My Top-Secret Codebreaking During 
World War II : The Last British Survivor of Bletchley Park's Testery" - 
to a full house, and there were a further 500 people on the waiting list. 
Guests comprised UCL alumni, staff, students and members of the public, 
including members of the "Save Bletchley Park" campaign.

Watch the lecture in full below :

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0903/09031601/

This lecture, along with other UCL lectures, talks and podcasts, can also 
be viewed via UCL's presence on iTunes U.

To experience UCL audio and video via iTunes U, download the free iTunes 
software. Download the software and find out more about UCL on iTunes U.

http://itunes.ucl.ac.uk/

https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/BrowsePrivately/ucl.ac.uk.1995443767
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Martin Evans | 11 Mar 00:34
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Two more obituaries to Alan Stripp

The British daily newspapers Telegraph and The Independent have today 
published somewhat belated obituaries to Alan Stripp.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/4969589/Alan-Stripp.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/alan-stripp-wartime-cryptographer-who-helped-decode-japanese-signals-1641048.html

or, if the latter proves unwieldy:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/

Martin Evans

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       Maritime Museums in Britain and Ireland:
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Martin Postranecky | 8 Mar 15:45
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Bletchley's record

March 7, 2009

Bletchley's record
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Recognising the incredible record of achievements from Bletchley Park

Sir, Bob King suggests ( letter, Mar 5 ) that Bletchley Park never solved 
messages from Himmler's Sicherheitsdienst (SD). In fact, Bletchley 
succeeded in solving about 13,000 SD messages. The resulting ISOSICLE 
( sic ) decrypts are now available at the National Archives, Kew. SD 
traffic provided high-quality intelligence on political and diplomatic 
subjects - for example, from Vichy France, where the SD had an agent who 
was a friend of Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister. However, none of the 
Gestapo's TGD messages was ever solved by Bletchley.

As to the claim that "messages were never intercepted at Bletchley 
Park," in June 1944 arrangements were made to intercept German naval 
Enigma traffic from the Channel at Bletchley, to help with the D-Day 
operation. Hut 4 teleprinted the resulting decrypts to the Admiralty on 
average 30 minutes after being intercepted. The record was 19 minutes -
a magnificent achievement.

Ralph Erskine
Comber, Co Down 

Comments :
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MY GOODNESS - we have some honest people and the use of an apology - such
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Gmane