At the French Ambassador’s official residence on Friday 9 November there was a small, but formal, ceremony, at which five British service personnel who had, in different ways, contributed to the liberation of France in 1944, were honoured by being…
Is Alan Turing worth £50?
There has been a minor flurry of interest in Alan Turing in recent days, with the suggestion that his face appear on a new series of Bank of England £50 notes. No doubt this would be a splendid way to…
How to make money from Enigma machines
According to the on-line museum http://www.cryptomuseum.com, 2018 marks the centenary of the invention by Arthur Scherbius of the Enigma machine. Enigma was probably the most famous of the mechanical cipher devices used in World War Two, its fame assured by…
Dermot Turing receives a letter from the Polish President
During an evening at the Polish Embassy celebrating the launch of his most recent book book "X, Y & Z: The Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken", Dermot was honoured to receive a letter from the Polish President Andrzej…
Launch of X, Y and Z at Bletchley Park
On 10th September 2018, Bletchley Park was host to representatives of the Polish Embassy in London and families of Polish codebreakers Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski for the launch of Dermot Turing’s latest book, X, Y and Z:…
Henryk Zygalski celebrated in Chichester
A ceremony was held at Chichester cemetery on 1st September to unveil a memorial stone to Henryk Zygalski, one of the most famous Polish codebreakers of WWII. It was attended by the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland, Dr Arkady…
Bletchley Park Presents Sir Dermot Turing’s new book X,Y & Z: The Real Story of How Enigma was Broken
Join Dermot and his guests at Bletchley Park on Monday September 10th, 2018 for the launch of X, Y and Z. The afternoon includes opening remarks by HE Arkady Rzegocki, the Polish Ambassador, a presentation by Dermot followed by a panel…
Was Gustave Bertrand a traitor or a hero?
Gustave Bertrand was the head of the Bureau of French Military Intelligence responsible for Signals Intelligence before World War 2. It was his agency that brought in Hans-Thilo Schmidt, the German spy who fed priceless secrets including details of the…
Zygalski’s sheets demystified
On the 22nd July, at the Józef Piłsudski Institute, there was an excellent presentation by Jerry McCarthy, who explained how the perforated cardboard sheets invented by the Polish code-breaker Henryk Zygalski had been used to find the starting-settings of the…
Are humanoid robots going to take over the planet?
Maybe not just yet. But control and containment of artificial intelligence is not an established or popular academic discipline. The research dollars go into learning systems, and especially into the headline-grabbing idea of self-driving cars. So who is watching the…
