New Scientist - UK (2022-05-14)

34 | New Scientist | 14 May 2022

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Exhibition

The Intelligence Factory,

and The Art of Data

Bletchley Park, UK

THROUGH movies like Enigma

and The Imitation Game, we think

we know all about Bletchley Park,

the UK government intelligence

centre in Buckinghamshire that

broke the codes and cyphers of

the Axis powers and changed the

course of the second world war.

But there are, it turns out, still

plenty more stories to tell.

The Intelligence Factory, a

permanent new exhibition on

the Bletchley Park site, which has

been a museum since 1993, mostly

steers clear of the achievements

of the likes of Alan Turing. Instead,

it seeks to recreate the unsung

work, also invaluable to the war

effort, undertaken by the large

and largely anonymous cast of

more junior workers. This was

predominantly young women,

who enabled Bletchley to gather

and disseminate “the product”,

as it described its intelligence,

to Allied forces and politicians.

Visitors can see historic

objects – often in the rooms where

they were used in wartime – such

as a Hollerith tabulating machine

and its punch cards, which became

a stepping stone to modern

computing. There are huge maps

and charts on which analysts

tracked shipping convoys in near

real time, interactive elements

to illustrate the problem-solving

that took place, and impressive

examples of early analogue data

management, storage and

visualisation systems – all of

which have direct parallels today.

But The Intelligence Factory

also features diaries, home movies

and even teddy bears belonging

to workers, mixing the intensely

personal with the wider picture

of ordinary people taking on

an extraordinary task.

The sheer scale of the endeavour

is overwhelming: you even enter

through a large loading bay built

to accommodate the delivery of

2 million punch cards every week

to feed the Hollerith machines.

When war began, Bletchley

was likened to a small university.

It succeeded in cracking codes,

but the sheer weight of

information it received became

ever more unmanageable. Over

the years, it dramatically scaled

up to something closer to a

factory. By the end of the war,

9000 people were on site, 75 per

cent of them women. Their work –

such as punching those cards –

was often mind-numbingly

repetitive, and they had little or

by international crime agencies,

and algorithms that identify

suspicious shipping movements.

Another new exhibition on the

site, The Art of Data, also explores

data visualisation through

strikingly visualised 21st-century

uses, from heat maps tracking

swimmers in an Ironman race

to the movements of the local

Milton Keynes Dons football

team during a match.

Behind all this, the human

element shines out, as it did in

wartime. It was the quiet skills of

organisation and resilience as well

as genius minds and cutting-edge

innovation that allowed Bletchley

to succeed. In the end, The

Intelligence Factory is a moving

and inspiring story of a myriad

small jobs being done by ordinary

people that together amounted

to something very special.  ❚

Nicholas Wroe is a writer and

editor, based in London

no idea where they fitted into the

bigger picture.

They were also forbidden to

speak about their work, even to

colleagues. Unsurprisingly,

morale was a major concern for

Bletchley’s leadership, and its

famous tennis courts as well as

its concerts and societies were

a stab at addressing the issues.

But logistics were even more

of a headache

Feeding, housing and

transporting the workforce

became as much a focus as the

logistics of collating, sharing

and making retrievable the

vast swathes of information

(all on paper) across the site. The

exhibition shows both activities,

with food playing a prominent

role. A newfangled idea – the

canteen, copied from the Kodak

factory in Harrow – was

introduced to improve efficiency.

Scattered across the exhibition

are modern applications of ideas

developed at Bletchley in the

1940s. These include an Encrochat

phone used by criminal gangs,

whose encryption was cracked

Codes, cyphers and a cuppa

A moving exhibition at Bletchley Park shows women’s crucial contribution

to the success of the UK’s wartime intelligence centre, finds Nicholas Wroe

There are huge maps and

charts on which analysts

tracked shipping convoys

“ Staff were forbidden to

speak about their work,

even to colleagues.

Unsurprisingly, morale

was a major concern”