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History

Bletchley Park & WWII

GC&CS enjoyed tremendous success against foreign diplomatic codes between the war, but was much less successful against the mechanical and electromechanical cipher systems, most famously Enigma, used by the military forces of the countries the UK would go to war with in 1939

Bletchley Park during World War Two

Find out how surviving Bletchley Park veterans can apply for a Bletchley Park commemorative badge.

GC&CS moved to Bletchley Park and began to call itself GCHQ. Helped by crucial insights from the Poles and French, and rejuvenated by an influx of new blood, most famously Alan Turing, GCHQ became an industrialised intelligence agency, and partnership with the US and Commonwealth partners gave it global reach.  

As well as producing the intelligence that saved thousands of allied lives, Bletchley Park saw the birth of modern computing. Furthermore, in January 1944 GCHQ became the National Technical Authority for information security.

colossus, the world's first electronic computer