Bletchley Park code-breakers: who was Gordon Welchman?

BBC documentary chronicles Alan Turing’s fellow team-member in cracking the Enigma code
Influential: Gordon Welchman's developments at Bletchley Park helped shaped the internet, the Cloud, and surveillance methods
BBC/Arrow Media/Greenberg
Ben Travis7 September 2015

Upon hearing the words ‘Bletchley Park’, one name immediately springs to mind: Alan Turing, the genius who helped win World War II by creating a machine that could decrypt the Enigma code.

However, it wasn’t just Turing who worked on the top secret Bletchley Park projects – he was one of four highly intelligent men who were recruited to lead the UK’s code-breaking efforts, alongside Hugh Alexander, Stuart Milner-Barry, and Gordon Welchman.

A new BBC documentary, titled Bletchley Park: Code Breaking’s Forgotten Genius, argues that Welchman’s work was just as influential and prescient as Turing’s – so why don’t many people know his name? He wasn’t even included in the Turing biopic The Imitation Game, which featured an Oscar-nominated performance from Benedict Cumberbatch.

Welchman was recruited to the Government Code & Cypher School at Bletchley Park when he was Dean at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge. After making a breakthrough in cracking the enemy code with his traffic analysis method, he spearheaded Bletchley Park’s top secret ‘Hut 6’ initiative, which targeted German radio networks and intercepted their messages with a refined version of Turing’s initial machine, named the Bombe.

During his efforts with the US military defence in the Cold War, Welchman pioneered a revolutionary ‘horseshoe’ system, not unlike The Cloud that we have today – a constantly updated shared network connecting planes, ground forces, submarines, and battleships.

Welchman’s lasting legacy extends to current digital surveillance technologies in positive and negative ways. His traffic analysis technique forms the basis for contemporary surveillance methods, which aided in the likes of the hunt for Bin Laden after 9/11, but was also complicit in the collection of ‘metadata’ as revealed in the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.

The Imitation Game premiere

1/12

Whether used for good or not, the impact of Welchman’s technological advancements remain a hugely influential force on the modern world – just as much as Turing’s breakthroughs in computing.

BBC Two, 9pm

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in