Bletchley Park has announced it will open an exciting new exhibition featuring an immersive film and display to visitors in Spring 2019 to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
The exciting audio-visual experience, D-Day: Interception, Intelligence, Invasion will be located in the newly restored Teleprinter Building located at the historic World War Two site.
BT will be the exclusive and sole corporate partner of the restoration of Teleprinter Building and the exhibition.
Presenting the vital role Bletchley Park played in informing the D-Day invasion, the exhibition will introduce the people involved and showing how different kinds of intelligence were used by the Allies to enable the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 with precise detail.
Iain Standen, CEO of the Bletchley Park Trust, said: “This exhibition allows our visitors to learn about the crucial role Bletchley Park played in the preparations for the D-Day invasion, and to understand the importance of the ULTRA intelligence produced here.”
The codebreaking operations at Bletchley Park depended on secure communications and new technologies.
Alongside the Codebreakers worked the General Post Office (now BT) engineers, who managed Bletchley Park’s secure communications network and delivered innovative information technology such as Colossus, the world’s first electronic digital computer.
The GPO also provided personnel and equipment for the Radio Security Service (RSS) which intercepted messages from the German intelligence service (Abwehr) throughout the war, and passed them to Bletchley Park. A display in Bletchley Park’s Visitor Centre is unveiled today, outlining the breadth and importance of the unique shared heritage between BT and Bletchley Park.
Sir John Scarlett, chairman of Bletchley Park Trust, said: “We are delighted to have BT as our partner in delivering this stimulating and innovative new addition to our visitor experience.
"We believe it provides the ideal opportunity for both organisations to build on, and to demonstrate, a remarkable shared heritage which goes back to to the very earliest days of Government Code & Cypher School.”
Howard Watson, BT group chief technology and information officer, said: “Bletchley Park is the origin of modern computing in Britain. Our own scientists and engineers, including the great Tommy Flowers, played a pivotal role in Bletchley’s history, and we’re proud to be able to support the creation of this exciting new visitor experience that will hopefully inspire a new generation of brilliant thinkers.”
The Teleprinter Building at Bletchley Park was a key wartime communications hub.
The latest phase of restoration has revealed new insights into the buildings constructed at Bletchley Park during World War Two.
As well as the wooden huts used to house people and the industrial blocks built in the latter part of the war, a third family of buildings has now been identified - the ‘Machine Buildings’ of Teleprinter Building, and Huts 11 and 11A.
These were predominantly windowless, reinforced concrete buildings with a flat roof, specifically designed to house important machinery.
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