Monday was a public holiday in the UK and my niece, who is a Captain in the British Army was back in the UK for a long weekend. I have not seen her in a couple of years and we decided to meet up in Bletchley (where my friend Barbara lives) and visit Bletchley Park.
This was the location of one of the biggest secrets of WW2 and the home of the Enigma machine and the fantastic device that was built to decipher the Nazi coded messages and provide vital intelligence to the Allied forces.
It is a veritable mecca for math nerds and others of that persuasion, and also computer enthusiasts as some of the original computer designs emanated from the activities here.
The whole place was a closely guarded secret for many years after the war and has only recently opened to the public.
It was a truly fascinating day even though I had no clue as to how the device worked or the mathematical theories behind it. My niece Amy sat there as they talked about it nodding knowledgeably and trying to explain the theories. Needless to say she was a Math and Computer major in college prior to joining the army!
