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BLETCHLEY PARK has been called Britain’s greatest achievement of the first
half of the 20th century. Between 1939 and 1945, the top-secret establishment
deep in the Buckinghamshire countryside consistently broke German, Japanese (and
even American) military codes, built Colossus, the world’s first programmable
electronic computer and, say many historians, shortened the Second World War by
at least two years—thereby saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

For decades, Bletchley Park was Britain’s best-kept secret. During the war,
Churchill forbade the use of any information gleaned by the station if there was
the slightest possibility that it would jeopardise the secret. This included
intelligence that the Germans were planning a devastating bombing raid on
Coventry in mid-November 1940. Then, at the end of the war, Churchill ordered
that every bit of equipment at Bletchley Park be smashed into pieces no larger
than a fist and all records destroyed. That included “Ultra”, a mammoth
cross-indexed card system that contained every message ever
deciphered—arguably the greatest weapon of the war and a priceless
historical record.

The Nazis never suspected that their “unbreakable” Enigma and Lorenz radio
traffic was so comprehensively read, and the German government was officially
informed of this only in the 1970s. But the secret of Bletchley Park,
Churchill’s “goose that laid the golden egg but never cackled”, is now well and
truly out. There have been numerous books about the establishment, which
employed 12 000 people, and even a recent television series, Station X
.

With all this publicity, you might think that the future of Bletchley Park
was secure. Well, you’d be wrong. In the past three years, the Bletchley Park
Trust has had been turned down for two major grants: the first, a Heritage Fund
grant for £12.5 million, which was turned down in November 1995; the
second, a Millennium Fund grant for £6 million, which was turned down in
January 1997.

To be fair to the National Lottery and the Millennium Fund, they were
concerned that the 22-hectare site was not owned by the Bletchley Park Trust but
by British Telecom and the British government (although this is expected to
change soon) and also that the trust might not have in place the professional
management structure needed to achieve its ambitious plans. It is a disgrace
that, 54 years after the end of the Second World War, a site of such pivotal
importance to the free world is no more than a decaying collection of anonymous
huts.

It was at Bletchley Park that Eisenhower planned the Normandy landings. Some
of the greatest mathematicians of the century worked at Bletchley Park, most
notably Alan Turing. And it was at Bletchley Park that Post Office engineer
Tommy Flowers, one of the great unsung heroes of computing, designed and built
the Colossus computer. Colossus decoded the teleprinter traffic spewed out by
the complex Lorenz machine, allowing the Allies to eavesdrop on the most
sensitive communications between Hitler and his generals.

Turn to any book on the history of computing, and you will probably read that
the first electronic digital computer was ENIAC, built at the University of
Pennsylvania in 1945. Bill Gates repeats the same fiction in his latest book,
Businessthe Speed of Thought. Yet Colossus was operating in 1943, and
by the end of the war it had been joined by 10 companions. It’s time historians
of computing set their facts straight. Are you listening, Mr Gates?

The Bletchley Park Trust will apply for another Heritage Fund grant very soon
when it announces its acquisition of the site. Let’s hope the money is
forthcoming this time around and that Britain does not disgrace itself
again.