From ptrourke@mediaone.net Sun Nov 7 09:11:11 1999 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id JAA46706 for ; Sun, 7 Nov 1999 09:11:09 -0800 Received: from chmls06.mediaone.net (chmls06.mediaone.net [24.128.1.71]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.08) with ESMTP id JAA21965 for ; Sun, 7 Nov 1999 09:11:08 -0800 Received: from patricktrourke (h00500480cb85.ne.mediaone.net [24.218.107.166]) by chmls06.mediaone.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id MAA11983 for ; Sun, 7 Nov 1999 12:11:07 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <000501bf2943$11dce4a0$a66bda18@ne.mediaone.net> From: "Patrick T. Rourke" To: "Classics List" Subject: John Chadwick at Bletchley Park Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1999 12:11:02 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 An interesting tidbit of information: in a lecture on CSPAN-2 Simon Singh (author of "The Code Book") told an anecdote about an interview with John Chadwick. Apparently he asked Chadwick why he had chosen to work on Linear B; Chadwick responsed that his interest began with his work at Bletchley Park (Al K. will probably want to correct that spelling). From what Singh said, I gather that Chadwick's presence at Bletchley Park (the British team that broke the German Enigma code) isn't widely known. Anyone have any more information (and I'm not looking for a list of classicists at Bletchley Park; Dillwn Knox leaps to mind). Singh (lecturing at the Boston Public Library, I don't know the date, and am annoyed that I didn't hear about it before) gave an excellent overview of most issues in cryptography, featuring our old friend the SATOR ROTAS square, RSA public key encryption (which we all use every day; it is the basis of 128 bit Internet encryption), Charles Babbage and Alan Turing, and the like. A nice reminder that the skills learned by classicists have not merely real-world applications, but commercial applications: Internet cryptography is a booming business. This has been of interest to me since the son of another wartime cryptographer taught an excellent class at my alma mater down the road from BPL on decipherment and its links to cryptography. Switching away from the end of the lecture, I was fascinated to hear a group of pundits comparing Al Gore's position in the current campaign first to the challenger in an animal pack facing off against the alpha male, then a clear allusion to the sacred king/tanist pattern, ending finally with a "Dem. Pollster" whose name escapes me saying that "the problem with the literati is that they read too much Greek mythology." So much for the Algore's brief flirtation with the classical world. . . . P. T. Rourke ptrourke@mediaone.net .