A surviving Enigma machine
July 9, 1941: British scientists at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, England break Nazi Germany's "Enigma" code. This becomes a key element in the Allied victory in World War II.
Bletchley Park was a country estate built in 1883. During World War II, it housed the Government Code and Cypher School, which regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powers. The GC&CS team of codebreakers included Alan Turing, Gordon Weichman, Hugh Alexander, Bill Tutte and Stuart Milner-Barry. The nature of the work at Bletchley remained secret until many years after the war.
In 1939, after the outbreak of war, French and Polish intelligence agents brought an Enigma machine to England, and the GC&CS went to work. It took a year and a half before Turing and the others were able to break through. Once they did, German coded messages were at the Allies' mercy.
In the 1960s, the "new town" of Milton Keynes was built around Bletchley Park.
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July 9, 1941 was a Wednesday. The only sport in season at the time was baseball, and this was during the All-Star Break. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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