Pioneers of Climate Science

Global War and Global Warming

The very existence of Bletchley Park was unknown to the public for years after the end of the Second World War. When the British secrecy law expired in 1974, Frederick Winterbotham broke the story with the first book in English about it. Since then, it has come to be recognized as one of the many heroic and fascinating stories from the War. Under the technical leadership and inspiration of computer pioneer Alan Turing, hundreds of people toiled to receive, decode, and distribute the contents of German messages. The slightest leak about their work could have alerted the enemy and brought it all to naught.  But they all kept the secret, even from their families. Geniuses recruited from academia, industry, and even the Royal Postal Service designed and optimized machines to speed the decoding process. Among these machines, and still little recognized in the history of computers, were room-sized devices which were, in fact, the earliest programmable computers.

Information extracted from German messages enabled allied convoys to evade German submarines and enabled British generals to anticipate the movement of German armies. Bletchley Park is credited with Britain's survival through the early years of the War, and ultimately with shortening the war by months or years. See "Station X" by Michael Smith for one of the best accounts of Bletchley Park.