Secret Life of Bletchley Park - McKay Sinclair [134]
Late in 1944, Turing still had further cryptological challenges to take on, and he did so both at Bletchley Park and the nearby communications base, Hanslope Park. Building on ideas he had seen in the United States, he was working on a new speech encipherment system, to be given the name ‘Delilah’ – that is, a deceiver of men.
It was extraordinarily complex stuff, involving sound frequencies and bandwidths. According to Andrew Hodges, Turing, together with two new young recruits, Robin Gandy and Donald Bayley, installed himself in a corner of a Hanslope laboratory. Though this establishment, in contrast to Bletchley, was assuredly military, Turing was still very much the archetypal wartime boffin, in shiny trousers and with his unkempt hair and the unselfconsciously strange noises that he would make while working.
Turing was remarkably good with electronics, given that he was entirely self-taught, but it was Bayley who provided a certain level of organisation. There was one bout of turbulence when Turing told Bayley of his homosexuality; Bayley had only heard of such things through smutty jokes and was horrified. What might have ended in embarrassed silence escalated into a shouting match. But somehow, the two men were able to find an understanding, for Bayley continued to work with Turing, whatever he might have felt about his orientation. Indeed, their collaboration was to prove quite remarkable – if anyone could ever have realised it.
Turing first of all chose to sleep in the old house of Hanslope itself, and then, rather like Bletchley, moved into a cottage near the Park’s kitchen garden, accompanied by Robin Gandy and a ginger cat. The two men would go for walks, and the ginger cat, unusually, would go with them. If Turing was annoyed at work, or by the behaviour of those around him, he would, as ever, go off on long runs around the countryside.
Although still a top secret base, Hanslope Park wasn’t Bletchley; but in one other curious respect, it was very similar. And that is that Turing found himself pulled into a social life, a sense of community. Although more military in flavour – mess jackets at smart dinners (a dinner jacket in Turing’s case) and so forth – there were parties, dances with ATS girls, gossip and social intrigue. Turing was rather popular.
Holding as he did the unique position of eccentric boffin, he combined this with a surprisingly youthful outlook – to some he could seem even younger than thirty-four – which made him a draw for both men and women. It was an appeal that crossed ranks; he seemed to mingle as happily with the working-class Tommys as with anyone else. He even gave complicated mathematical lectures.
And as 1945 dawned, Turing and Bayley persisted with the labyrinth of wires and valves that comprised the Delilah system, conducting ever more complex work with equations and frequencies and kilohertz. By the spring, they had succeeded in enciphering a recording of a Churchill speech – the coded version sounded like the hiss of white noise. But the conflict was nearly over and there was no longer any sense of urgency. No matter how extraordinary the technical achievement, the military powers had other matters on their minds now. Encryption of this sort was low on the list of priorities.
The question now was: what parts of Turing’s scientific work would find government or even private sponsorship in peacetime? His Fellowship at King’s College was renewed for another three years, which would give him £300 per annum and academic freedom. He was also awarded the OBE; for reasons of security, such awards were rare, for fear of the citation giving away some element of the work that had been done.
However, with the lack of enthusiasm for the Delilah system – it seems the Post Office was working upon its own commercial sound encryption techniques