E33 - Rescued and Restored

April 2015

This month we take you into our new Hut 12 Exhibit; Rescued and Restored, showcasing historical treasures found during the transformation of the Huts and Blocks. When conservation specialists were brought in to rescue fragile, derelict buildings as part of the much needed first phase of restoration, little could they know what they might find. In the cracks between roof beams in Hut 6 they discovered folded pieces of what appear to be scrap paper, with mysterious notes scribbled on them. Among them were the only known examples of used Banbury Sheets ever found. The system invented by Alan Turing was used to help deduce the daily Enigma settings, before the process was mechanised by the development of the Turing Welchman Bombe.

Maths comes to life at Bletchley Park and that’s why the 2015 Milton Keynes Maths Challenge final was held there. Students from secondary schools pitted their wits against each other in a series of timed challenges. At the sound of an air raid siren, the groups dashed from one puzzle to the next, winning prizes including chocolate eggs, scientific calculators and shopping vouchers. The podcast takes you inside the minds of the competitors with members of Bletchley Park’s Education team.

Pat Davies joined the Wrens in 1942 at the age of 19, in a bid to avoid being sent to join a ‘crowd of jolly girls’ from the Foreign Office at a place in Buckinghamshire called Bletchley Park, where her mother thought she should go. Pat wanted to go to sea, but it wasn’t to be as she was given the task of intercepting naval messages from a key vantage point on the south coast. Pat stopped for a chat with the Bletchley Park Podcast in the Block C cafe when she brought some old friends for a visit. Pat talk’s about her wartime service and her post war career working as a television producer.

Picture: ©Bletchley Park Trust

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