St Mary's Calne
On Monday 10th October, 65 students from UIV and UV (Years 9 and 10) enjoyed a day of autumn sunshine and historical discovery at one of the birth places of the modern digital age, Bletchley Park.
An ‘intelligence factory’ during the Second World War, this remarkable site saw 9,000 people collect and analyse a phenomenal amount of intercepted German, Italian and Japanese communications. Their painstaking work enabled the Allied forces to reduce the length of the war by an estimated two years, saving perhaps 4 million lives in the process.
The students were taken on a guided tour around the large site, learning about the people who worked there and kept their crucial role in the war effort secret. They then undertook a workshop on decoding enemy messages, learning about morse code, Enigma encryption and the art of locating enemy submarines on Atlantic Ocean charts. During this workshop the students got to see a genuine, working Enigma machine and use a digital model of one to decode their own messages. Language skills were also required as the messages were in German. Decoding kudos go to Funmilola, Hettie and Atlaas (UV) and Clementine.M, Jemima E, Alice O, Jazz L and Addy A (UIV).
Finally, the group got to tour the impressive exhibitions, in which they learnt about the ground-breaking work of Alan Turing and the birth of main-frame computers like ‘Colossus’. Artefacts included his personal belongings and examples of the technology that he invented. There was a stunning display on how the intelligence was collected and analysed, with sound, vision and hands on artefacts that the students could engage with. An exhibition on the ‘Art of Data’ showed imaginative and beautiful ways of translating data into visual representations.
A brilliant time was had by all, in a place that saved our country and laid the foundations of a technological revolution.
Mr Stoten