Bletchley park and big science: industrialising the secret war, 1939-1945

Abstract

ABSTRACT During the Second World War, Bletchley Park, the headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School, was the epicentre of a vast scientific enterprise which succeeded in reading enciphered Axis wireless traffic on an industrialised scale. Typically, this important intelligence agency has been depicted as a collegiate organisation with a clear Senior Common Room culture. This article argues that Bletchley Park is better understood as major mechanised, military orientated scientific enterprise with vast numbers of employees, a considerable budget and was subject to careful and professionally managed wartime media control which extended for many years into the post-war period. Each of these facets respectively represents each of the five ‘M’s of ‘Big Science’. As such, the agency can in fact, be viewed and understood as an example of quasi-Big Science.