Jan 12 - Westside School Pupils Decipher Code Using Enigma Machine
Benedict Cumberbatch’s character Alan Turing was hailed a hero after he broke the Nazi German’s wartime signals in The Imitation Game.
His character deciphers the code using the Enigma machine - invented by the Germans and used to send top-secret signals to each other. The Nazis were convinced that this code cannot be broken.
This rare machine was on display to Year 8 pupils at Westside School today as part of The Enrich Project run by the University of Cambridge. This visit was organised by the Kusuma Trust together with the Department of Education, and the Minister for Education Gilbert Licudi was invited along for the presentation into the workings of the Enigma machine.
Dr James Grime, who will be running the project today along with different workshops such as code breaking and how to think like a mathematician, explains that he has travelled all over the world with the Enigma machine for display purposes.
This 79-year-old Enigma machine has been on display in Hong Kong, Canada, all over Europe and across various schools in the UK before being brought to Gibraltar.
Dr Grime said: “I have brought in one of these rare Enigma machines, there aren’t that many of these left, to show to the girls how mathematicians broke this code and in doing so saved lives.
“It is not often that a mathematician gets to be the hero in that way.”
Dr Grime explains that although the Enigma was used during World War II so that the Allies and the British could decode German messages, code making and code breaking is more relevant today than ever before.
He adds: “I am here today to tell a history and show the Enigma, but nowadays we use code all the time on the internet while banking or sending secret information on the internet – we are sending that in code, so it is more important and even more relevant to our lives today.
“I want to tell them about the history and mathematics of code and code-making, but the real reason I am here is to show the students a different, more interesting, and perhaps a more exotic application of real-life maths.”
He is hoping his visit to Westside School today will inspire and motivate more students to take up maths.
While Cumberbatch’s character questions whether it is only a machine that can break another machine in The Imitation Game, it was only after a German invasion was imminent in 1939, that the Polish chose to share their secrets with the British Government after having reconstructed their own Enigma machine.
Britain's Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, became the centre for Allied efforts to keep up with dramatic war-induced changes in Enigma output.
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