The British site was the location of an important message decoding center during World War II, and also played an important role in the development of modern computers.

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Marco Werman: Now, here is another quiz for you. Name the place where Britain broke Germany’s enigma code during World War II. Well, it’s Bletchley Park, an estate and mansion in England. During the war, it was a headquarters of Britain’s top intelligence and code-breaking operation. It was there that secret German-coded messages were intercepted and deciphered. Decades later the mansion had fallen into disrepair and faced an uncertain future. Enter Sue Black; she’s a Senior Research Associate in software engineering at University College, London, and she’s been working for years to help save Bletchley Park. Black said she was surprised when she first visited the site.

Sue Black: I thought when I first went there that it would be quite a small place and that, maybe, I don’t know, 50 people worked there. But in fact, it was more than 10,000 people working there over the course of the 2nd World War – working there as code breakers and machine operators.

Werman: Give us a picture of the scene there. It’s a gorgeous Victorian manor in its code breaking heyday in World War II. Describe what we would have seen going on at Bletchley Park.

Black: Well, there’s a big mansion house but it is part of a 50-acre site. There’s loads of huts all around with code breakers working inside them; lots of people riding around on bicycles. Dispatch riders coming in with messages and taking them in to be decoded. Churchill used to go up there now and again to check out what was happening and have high level talks with the code breakers there.

Werman: And crucially, the code breakers at Bletchley Park got to the bottom of the so-called ‘German enigma machine’. That was pretty key to the end of the war?

Black: Yeah, absolutely. So, the work done there was said by Eisenhower, actually, to have shortened the war by 2 years. So, there was the bomb machines that were used to crack the enigma cipher and the Colossus machine which was invented by a British engineer called Tommy Flowers, built to help in the code breaking efforts but also became the world’s first programmable digital computer.

Werman: Well, that actually is a good way to bring us up to date because this kind of where your interest in saving Bletchley Park comes in. Explain.

Black: Yeah, absolutely. So, I went up there for a meeting, probably about 7 years ago now and, at that time, found out from the Director that Bletchley might have to close because they didn’t have any money. They didn’t get government funding or industry funding. Their main funding came from people going to visit and he was really worried that they would have to close.

Werman: Right. And it’s a museum, right? That’s why people…

Black: And it’s a museum, yes. So, you know, I thought that was outrageous, that it shouldn’t have to close considering the amazing stuff that happened there.

Werman: Right.

Black: So, I started a campaign with computer scientists in the U.K. and that raised the profile a bit. Then, I started using Twitter and Social Media and got people like Stephen Fry involved in that.

Werman: The actor. And now, Google is involved. Tell us how and why.

Black: Yeah. That’s so cool! Some of Alan Turing’s… I don’t know if everyone knows about Alan Turing but he was one of the code-breakers that were there.

Werman: Yeah. The mathematical genius who played a huge role in the code breaking.

Black: That’s right, absolutely. And the father of computer science worked there as one of the code-breakers. Some of his papers were up for auction at Christie’s Auction House in London, and they were up for auction at 300,000 to 500,000 Pounds. I, along with several other people really wanted Bletchley Park to be able to buy them, you know, to put on exhibition there. So, I got in contact with one of the Google Vice-Presidents and, coincidentally, the next day, a guy called Sammy Machin – he works with Google – tweeted me (he got in touch via Twitter). He said he wanted to help with the Turin papers and Bletchley Park. Basically, Simon worked over about 4 or 5 days to raise $100,000 from Google to buy the Turin papers for Bletchley Park. So, you know all credit to him. He did an amazing job and that relationship’s continuing. And so, Google are getting more involved with Bletchley Park and they’re working together now.

Werman: So what does the future look like for Bletchley Park now? You saw it a couple of years ago possibly going broke, in a way, and now what?

Black: I had a chat with the Director and one of the guys from Google a few months ago. The Director was saying, “You don’t need to talk about saving Bletchley Park any more Sue, it’s saved!”

Werman: Congratulations.

Black: [Laughs] I guess I kind of knew but, you know, now that he actually, directly said that to me and they won’t have to shut now. But, of course, they’ve had lack of investment over decades, so they still need lots of money to turn the site into a world-class museum, which it should be. So, if anyone wants to give them some money, please give them money. It’s saved, so it won’t close, but they still need quite a lot of money.

Werman: Sue Black is the Founder and CEO of the Go To Foundation which promotes computer science to the general public. She started a campaign to save Bletchley Park. Thanks very much Sue for speaking with us.

Black: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

This week, a look back at the career of the late Sergei Mikhalkov, who has died aged 96. During World War Two, Mikhalkov wrote the lyrics to the Soviet national anthem. After Stalin died, he rewrote the lyrics, expunging all mention of Stalin. Decades later, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian government adopted a new national anthem, but no-one particularly liked it: it just didn’t sound grand and powerful enough. So in 2000, Vladimir Putin re-installed the old tune by Alexander Alexandrov and had Mikhalkov re-write the lyrics yet again. This time round, instead of praising Stalin or Lenin, the anthem gave a nod to God. As someone who so readily held his finger to the political winds, it’s no surprise that Mikhalkov took part in smear campaigns against the likes Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Of course that was during Stalin’s rule, which means that not participating in such campaigns could have dire consequences.

Next, a conversation with Keith Spicer on Canada’s 40-year-old language laws. Spicer was the country’s first enforcer of bilingualism. Being Canadian, there wasn’t much enforcing– more like pusuading, cajoling and endless, endless debating. The way Spicer tells it, Canadians eventually embraced the law, with millions of English Canadians clamoring to learn French. He says that Quebec’s provincial language rules that outlawed signs in English and discouraged English-language expressions in French were silly but understandable, given the historical hostility to French in Anglophone Canada.

Finally, this month the British government finally apologized for its treatment of Alan Turing, who helped break the Nazis’ war codes. When Turing’s homosexuality was exposed, the British government stripped him of his security clearance and prosecuted him for gross indecency. Faced with a prison term, Turing agreed as an alternative to hormone treatment. The treatment drove him to suicide in 1954.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: Homosexuality was illegal in England until 1967 and Alan Turing was a victim of that law. Turing was a celebrated mathematician. He contributed to the defeat of Germany in World War II by cracking secret Nazi codes. But Alan Turing was also gay and that caused him trouble. The 1996 TV movie, “Breaking the Code,” dramatized Touring’s life. Here Touring, played by Derek Jacobi, gets some advice from his boss played by Richard Johnson.

RICHARD JOHNSON: I do you think you might be a little more discreet. Tongues are beginning to work.

DEREK JACOBI: Am I in for the lesson in morals?

JOHNSON: And common sense. I mean I don’t give a dam whether you choose to g to bed with crows boys or with Cocker Spaniels but it would be wiser to keep your private life to yourself.

JACOBI: Is this an official reprimand?

JOHNSON: Friendly advice. Nothing more.

MULLINS: Once Alan Touring’s secret was out he was forced to undergo hormonal treatments which did him harm. Touring’s life unraveled and he killed himself in 1954. He was 41. Now there’s a campaign afoot to get the British government to apologize for the way it treated Touring. Richard Gill is one of hundreds of people who’ve signed a petition. He’s a professor of mathematical statistics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and he is an admirer of Touring.

RICHARD GILL: Alan Touring is one of the giants of the 20^th century. I think, as far as I know, a perfectly decent man. He did such important work. He did so much important work for Britain and the US for that matter. And then his life to come to an end in such a dismal way is really, really sad and I think it would be good to make the symbol that top authorities apologize for what went wrong.

MULLINS: What is your own personal connection to Alan Touring?

GILL: Well I have some sort of small, old, personal connections. For instance, my mother actually worked at Bletchly Park during the war where they were breaking the codes, applying the algorithms which Touring had figured it out in order to break the secret codes which were being used to target the U-boats – to sink British and American shipping. So my mother was one of many young ladies who just sat there turning wheels on machines for doing long calculations, long multiplications and additions and so on. And it’s very exciting because they knew they had broken the codes from time to time. That’s one little connection.

MULLINS: As you say he was a brilliant mathematician. What did it take in that time to break the Nazi code?

GILL: It’s like solving a puzzle – like solving a Sudoko puzzle. You know you have to systematically try this and this and this. If you very systematically do the right steps in the right order. It’s like getting out of a maze. You know if you keep your right hand on the wall you will get out. So in that sense he didn’t invent the computer for solving that, he invented a method, an algorithm we would say.

MULLINS: Alan Touring was called the father of computer science. Can you tell us why?

GILL: Well he talked very deeply about what a computer could do so I would just call him like the father of theoretical computer science or a father of theoretical computer science and all these ideas of the theory of codes a cryptography – making secret codes. That’s a whole lot of development in mathematics and in computer science which are all around this circle of ideas and a whole lot of modern technology like whether or not your internet banking is safe and things like that sort of depends on these ideas – this kind of mathematics – and it’s a basis of a lot of important computer science and computer applications.

MULLINS: Hmm interesting. Richard Gill, professor of mathematical statistics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Thank you very much.

GILL: It was a great pleasure.

MULLINS: Several hundred people have signed a petition to get the British government to issue a formal apology for its treatment of Alan Touring.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.