A couple of months back, I read The Code Book by Simon Singh. It is a history of cryptography through the ages, from the time of Mary Queen of Scots through to the complex encryption of today’s email systems. I found the book fascinating. Before the code was broken, it seemed almost impossible. With the solution in front of you, it suddenly seemed so simple. The book spent a couple of chapters explaining the problem of the Enigma machine developed by the Germans, and the unbelievable men and women of Bletchley Park whose intelligence and logic finally managed to crack it, apparently helping to shorten the war by several years.
And then I came across Mrs BB, a woman who had apparently worked out how the Enigma machine worked without ever having received a copy of a crib sheet and long before Alan Turing’s team finally found the solution. Unfortunately, her ideas were regarded as too simplistic and were therefore dismissed – an action which undoubtedly cost precious time, and many more lives. The irony was, the simple solution was actually the solution.
Mrs BB, whose identity was never discovered, is the woman I have chosen to mark Ada Lovelace Day with. As a cryptanalyst, I am sure she was as capable as all of her colleagues at Bletchley Park. The people who worked there were selected from the greatest mathematical, logical, linguistic and rational minds in the country at the time. However, what I admire her for even more was the fact that she didn’t immediately assume that the answer to the problem had to be complicated. Sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution – a fact that she recognised.
It is an unfortunate fact that women haven’t always enjoyed the respect, notoriety and acclaim they may have deserved in the fields of science and technology throughout history. This isn’t just due to the fact that so many women were barred from practicing in either industry due to societal and cultural expectations, but even when they were given the opportunity, many had to struggle to get their ideas heard or taken seriously.
Mrs BB to me represents all of those women in technology in the past who have come up with ideas, found solutions or suggested alternatives and been ignored or ridiculed. Her situation was made worse by the secrecy which surrounded all of the Bletchley Park staff for years after the war. But while we now celebrate the achievements of Alan Turing and his team in helping Britain come through the Second World War, Mrs BB remains in anonymous obscurity. And yet, she is a woman in technology who has added an extra paving stone to the path of those women in science and technology today who are heard, who are finding answers and who are receiving the acclaim that they deserve.
To Mrs BB…
If you want to find out more about Mrs BB, you can read Action This Day edited by Michael Smith and Ralph Erskine, from where I gained this idea.
Thank you
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Tags: Bletchley Park, crypotography, Enigma
