Queen to visit Bletchley park codebreakers

Monarch will honour men and women codebreakers and their role in the second world war The Queen is paying a visit to Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes, Britain’s most historic site of secret code-breaking activities and the birthplace of the modern computer. The monarch will unveil a memorial to the men and women codebreakers, honouring the vital role they played in the second world war. She will be joined by the Duke of Edinburgh on her visit. During the second world war the site was home to the government’s Code and Cypher School, which obtained signals intelligence by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications. The Queen and the Duke will first visit the Colossus hut, where they will view an ongoing restoration project. Colossus machines were the first programmable electronic computers, designed by engineer Tommy Flowers to help codebreakers read German messages. The royal couple will see an Enigma display during their visit and be shown how the machine, used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages, worked. They will also view the Turing Bombe Machine, an electromechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher Enigma-encrypted signals which was created by English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist Alan Turing. Bletchley Park veterans will meet the royal couple before they move outside the main building to unveil a public memorial and view the roll of honour. The Queen Monarchy Second world war guardian.co.uk

Posted by on July 15, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.