Thursday, April 07, 2011

Chinese Whispers



The wheels on the Enigma machine waltzed their slow dance, around and around, and clicked their heels as each letter fell into place. Recovering the code books meant that the Allies could understand the enemy’s messages and would be able to anticipate their future moves.

The interpreter handed him the slip of flimsy paper. Would this be the one that brought about the end of this terrible war? His hand shaking, he looked down at the words in front of him and read:

Send three and fourpence we’re going to a dance.



NOTES:
The photo is a statue of Alan Turing, the man who broke the Enigma code at Bletchley (The UK Government’s secrets HQ) during WWII. Bletchley Park is now a museum of computing, code breaking and wartime life and the statue is on show there.

The significance of the ‘message’ will probably be lost on anyone under about 40 but you can find some clues here.

2 comments:

snafu said...

Good one. The funniest part was that a certain slightly boring friend did not get it at all and spent some time explaining how the Enigma machine worked and it could not have possibly produced that result.

Brian Miller said...

ha. nice...nope that wont be it...unless its code...hmmm....