[HN Gopher] Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
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Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
Author : danso
Score : 306 points
Date : 2025-04-01 12:55 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| lenerdenator wrote:
| It hurts to see the generation that won WWII pass, not the least
| bit because we seem to have forgotten the lessons from their
| struggle.
| deadbabe wrote:
| In their prime, they too forgot the lessons of their own
| ancestors struggle.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| One of the films in the Why We Fight series opens by
| following a handful of very old men attending the 1941
| Independence Day, or perhaps it was Memorial day, parade in
| Washington DC. The narrater later informs the viewer that
| these men are veterans of the Civil War.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Indeed, it is very easy to forget the struggle when one has
| sacrificed nothing to achieve it.
|
| At least WWII, unlike those preceding it, has a vast well of
| literature to draw those lessons from. The trouble, however, is
| not just getting younger people to sit, read and analyze it,
| but also to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak,
| with all the propaganda and misinformation to be had these days
| about the events of WWII, the Holocaust, Hiroshima/Nagasaki and
| so many other things that would make this list exceptionally
| long.
|
| Books, are not the same as having lived it, of course.
| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it best in The Gulag Archipelago.
|
| "If it were possible for any nation to fathom another people's
| bitter experience through a book, how much easier its future
| fate would become and how many calamities and mistakes it could
| avoid. But it is very difficult. There always is this
| fallacious belief: 'It would not be the same here; here such
| things are impossible.'
|
| Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible
| everywhere on earth."
| Tainnor wrote:
| > all the propaganda and misinformation to be had these days
| about the events of WWII, the Holocaust, Hiroshima/Nagasaki
| and so many other things
|
| I'm curious as to what sort of propaganda or misinformation
| you're referring to. I'm in Europe and I haven't seen much of
| it, but maybe it's different in the US.
| rjsw wrote:
| There are several downvoted comments from butthurt Nazis in
| this thread.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Those comments appear to be from reincarnations of the
| same user. There are a few serial trolls who spew out
| terrible comments on HN and register new alts when their
| latest comments/accounts get killed.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Webb_(code_breaker)
| tocs3 wrote:
| From wikipedia:
|
| _some tasks performed include registering messages on little
| cards, which Webb believes totaled 10,000 a day in the whole
| park, and organizing the cards into shoeboxes according to a
| strict order so they could be retrieved efficiently when called
| for._
|
| I suppose times have changed.
| dylan604 wrote:
| they called them computers for a reason
| hermitShell wrote:
| Technology has changed for sure. Is our usage of human
| capital any better as a whole? Probably not. So many BS jobs
| out there.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Somewhat unrelated: I'm hoping to go to Bletchley Park this
| summer, any recommendations?
| cjs_ac wrote:
| The main 'Bletchley Park' exhibition is good, but it focuses on
| the human experience of the code breakers. Head around the
| corner from the car park to the National Museum of Computing
| (also on the Bletchley Park site) to see more technical
| exhibitions: they give proper demonstrations of the machines
| invented at Bletchley, as well as the oldest working computer
| in the world (which was computing prime numbers when I
| visited).
|
| https://www.tnmoc.org/
| tialaramex wrote:
| Also, and not obvious, because these two entities are
| distinct despite occupying the same site: they're not always
| open at the same time. So if you want to see both, even if
| you plan to spend more time at one than the other, check
| they're both open.
|
| Whether something is the first computer is - inevitably - a
| definitional argument, but TNMOC has several candidates
| (though not all of them) including (a modern reproduction of,
| the original was destroyed as a secret) Colossus which is
| famous because of its involvement in the war.
|
| Bletchley Park is also still an actual stateley home, all the
| war stuff was built on somebody's grounds - there's a good
| chance you either don't care about stately homes or you're
| intending to visit a more interesting one (or indeed one of
| the Royal Palaces), in which case no need to care, but that's
| a third distinct thing on the same site.
|
| [Edited to make clear there is no original Colossus, we
| destroyed it because it was a secret]
| xnorswap wrote:
| We have a few such odd arrangements, such as the "London
| Bus Museum", which isn't in London but is in fact entirely
| within a completely different museum, the Brooklands
| museum.
|
| Operationally independent, although they have been
| considerate enough to synchronise their opening hours.
|
| If you're interested in London Buses however, I'd actually
| recommend the (also unrelated) London Transport Museum, as
| this one is located in the tourist heart of central London
| in Covent Garden.
|
| ( NB: Brooklands is itself a great museum, but more for the
| aviation history )
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Is Brooklands the place where the corner at the
| Silverstone racing circuit is named after? It's also
| known for its aviation history of course.
| 369548684892826 wrote:
| Yes, there was a race track at Brooklands. Some sections
| of it are still there including some steep banked track.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Although the London Transport Museum is fun (some years
| back I decided to spend a week in my own capital city as
| a tourist, staying in a hotel in the centre, all day
| looking at stuff with tourists - and LTM is one of the
| things I decided to do) like most museums it does have a
| _lot_ of stuff it can 't display - but unlike most
| museums those things are sometimes _huge_ like a bunch of
| buses, so they 're not in a back room they're an entire
| other site, in Acton IIRC, the Depot, which is in fact
| open this weekend: https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/whats-
| on/depot-open-days
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Agreed, it is well worth visiting both.
| whyage wrote:
| I wouldn't skip the main exhibition area. In an era where
| people were called computers, the human experience was at the
| heart of the Bletchley Park machine. In the main area, you
| learn about the makeup of this apparatus: the different roles
| people had, how information flowed within and between the
| huts, and much more. There's also a little museum with
| fascinating artifacts and an area dedicated to Turing. Don't
| miss it.
| nemo44x wrote:
| They have a neat computer history museum there so make time for
| that too.
| icosian wrote:
| I don't know if they are still in print but Bletchley Park
| Trust published a great series of monographs on particular
| aspects of the codebreaking story there. Highly technical,
| written by specialists, sometimes by people who had worked
| there. I picked up a load of them when I was there and can
| recommend.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| Definitely enjoy the scenery. I've done Bletchley and the
| National Cryptologic Museum, the former is in a genuinely
| beautiful location, especially if you have sun.
| icosian wrote:
| Only about a dozen years ago Bletchley was inviting former
| codebreakers back for an annual reunion. I used to go along to
| hear the talks, meet some of them and get books signed, including
| by Betty Webb. I'm glad they eventually got the recognition they
| deserved.
|
| We have almost lost the chance now to hear personal testimony of
| WWII. I've met several Battle of Britain pilots too, but the last
| died in Dublin recently:
|
| https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0318/1502596-hemingway/
| andrepd wrote:
| It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is _just
| now_ passing out of living memory. It 's also insane how 1 in 4
| Americans under 40 believe the holocaust is a fabrication or
| exaggeration.
| dylan604 wrote:
| the power of disinformation on social media platforms is
| _apparently_ stronger than classroom teaching. it doesn 't
| help that what is taught in classrooms is just getting worse
| for $reasons which is only going to get worse now that states
| are going to do whatever they want with schools now.
| tehjoker wrote:
| social conditions are deteriorating so people are reaching
| for alternative explanations. you want people to reach for
| true history? then you have to show them true history will
| benefit them. fortunately, there is a way to do this, but
| powerful people hate it and prefer patriotic history and
| disciplined workforces instead. then they blame minorities
| for the problems they cause.
| louthy wrote:
| > It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is
| just now passing out of living memory.
|
| Don't worry, there will be another one along any minute now.
| sys32768 wrote:
| Two years ago my mother's memory care home had an American
| Battle of the Bulge veteran and Bronze Star winner who was
| sharp as a tack.
|
| He was 99 and said he just wanted to live to be 100, but sadly
| he didn't make it.
|
| I remember my late grandmother telling us they had made mittens
| for my great uncle, but he died in that battle before the
| mittens arrived.
|
| Crazy to think I passed up my chance to have a cup of coffee
| with a man who might have fought beside my great uncle.
| zeke wrote:
| In 2001 in the small town of Hartsville SC, one of the youngest
| code breakers gave his last two public talks. He had been hired
| by Turing because he was one of the few studying both math and
| German at the start of the war.
|
| Besides being very interesting it felt odd to hear all this in
| such an out of the way place. Well after the war he
| collaborated on some books with a professor teaching at the
| college there.
| billfruit wrote:
| Any good book that delves into the detail of the code breaking
| done at Bletchley park?
| AndrewOMartin wrote:
| The Hut 6 Story, goes into enough detail that Gordon Welchman
| (Simply put, Turing's boss) lost his security clearance. If you
| care about the human side, but are keen to take on the details
| there's no better book possible.
| louthy wrote:
| Another vote for The Hut Six Story.
| hermitShell wrote:
| If you would enjoy loosely related fiction, Neal Stephenson
| Cryptonomicon is an option I would personally recommend. You
| must have some tolerance for his particular style and
| content...
| rjsw wrote:
| Or Enigma by Robert Harris.
| jtcond13 wrote:
| "The Theory that Would Not Die" by Sharon McGrayne has a good
| chapter on this, book is a more general history of Bayesian
| statistics.
| jefc1111 wrote:
| This is a great book and touches on the subject you mention
| https://simonsingh.net/books/the-code-book/
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Having read this book, I set some codes for my son to break.
| Each code, once broken, told him the location of the next
| coded message. And they got progressively harder. It was a
| fun challenge.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The author of this book also runs an excellent weekly maths
| newsletter/quiz for 11-16 year olds, and it's free:
|
| https://parallel.org.uk/parallelograms
| juliangamble wrote:
| I did the tour of Bletchley Park today and my Tour Guide said
| he'd met Betty Webb, that he mourned her loss, and that when he
| had met her at a reunion, she had remained tight-lipped about
| what her work had been on.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| I really like the four-part documentary series called "Staion X"
| which was all about Bletchly Park. It has numerous interviews
| with the folks that worked there -- they were a bunch of
| excellent oddballs, for sure.
|
| It's a really fascinating perspective on WWII and how crap Monty
| was at being a general; he was reading the Germans' messages and
| still couldn't defeat Rommel. Only when the Med fleet intercepted
| and sank all his resupply ships did Rommel's crew finally lose.
|
| The Germans' overconfidence in the Enigma machine was a big part
| of their downfall, especially once America's resources came to
| bear. Of course, that's what they deserved for having a leader
| speedballing meth and morphine.
|
| All that said, the interesting historical twist is that no WWII
| history before the 1970s is accurate because all the Bletchly
| work was completely classified until one of their officers wrote
| a book about it. They cover that in the documentaries, too. There
| were men and women who had never told their families about what
| they did during the war, until the news finally broke. One
| mentioned how her daughter wondered why her mom knew that 'M' was
| the 13th letter.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >It's a really fascinating perspective on WWII and how crap
| Monty was at being a general; he was reading the Germans'
| messages and still couldn't defeat Rommel.
|
| He did defeat Rommel though, didn't he?
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Yes, by rather a masterstroke of deliberately extending
| Rommels supply lines and fighting a giant staged battle at
| Rommels limit. By doing so he destroyed or captured much of
| Rommels men and material, rather than just pushing him back.
| All of which he did after a string of other Generals failed
| on the same front.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| And he defeated him twice. In the desert in 1942 and in
| France in 1944. Not bad for a crap General.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Eisenhower defeated Rommel, my friend, with Patton's
| brilliant help, dragging a limping Monty along by the hair.
| He was nearly sacked for insubordination.
|
| The Germans only feared one Allied General, and it wasn't
| Monty (it was Patton).
|
| If fact, Patton being relieved of command for slapping his
| soldier allowed him to serve as the uber-decoy in Great
| Britain to distract the Germans from being ready for a
| Normandy landing. God works in mysterious ways, indeed.
|
| The Germans thought Patton's sacking for slapping a soldier
| was a ruse; that's how much esteem they had for him.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| "They" defeated Rommel. No one can say whether he would have
| done so without Bletchley. Personally, I doubt he would have
| done so without the Med fleet utterly destroying all of
| Rommel's resupply train, but that's just my opinion.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| @dang For the sake of Dave Taht and Betty Webb, I believe a black
| bar is justified even on the 1st of April.
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