I had the chance to visit Bletchley Park. During World War II, this peaceful place became the headquarters of Ultra, the top secret codebreaking operation that cracked the Nazi Enigma and Lorenz ciphers, critically aiding the war effort. To aid in their effort, particularly as the Nazis added more complex codes, they built the first electronic computing machines to sort through the vast number of possible codes. The world has two reasons to be grateful to the people who worked here.
This is a reproduction of a Bombe machine. The museum also includes a reproduction Colossus machine.
I learned during my visit that Bill Tutte, who went onto create major contributions to graph theory, contributed a major breakthrough in the analysis of Nazi codes during his time at Bletchley Park.
Books by Marilyn Wolf 