Year 9 visit Bletchley Park
On Tuesday 23 May Year 9 took a trip to Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, the home of the Government Code and Cipher School.
The students enjoyed a guided tour of the site, as well as a one hour workshop about codes and ciphers. They were fascinated to learn about the crucial role Mathematics played in securing victory in the Second World War as well as the role of the thousands of women working at Bletchley Park. We were fortunate to have very favourable weather for the whole day. The students will now put into practice what they have learned by designing their own secret codes as part of their Year 9 Maths project.
Bletchley Park is famous for its pivotal role during the Second World War. It was the work of the academics and mathematicians stationed there that allowed the Allied Forces to intercept and decode the German messages, a task thought impossible given the complexity of the Enigma coding system used by the Nazis. It was in the effort to decode the German messages that scientists, including Alan Turing, developed the technology that would lead to the invention of the modern computer.