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Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
- dranke8 2y ago[flagged]
- jingoer7 2y ago[flagged]
- TwoTier 2y ago[flagged]
- aketchum 2y agothis seems unrelated to the post
- pbalau 2y agoThere seems to be an attack against this post, for some reason.
- AlecSchueler 2y agoFascists have recently become emboldened.
- 4ndrewl 2y agoThe user seems unrelated to reality. They keep reposting the same thing under different accounts.
- TwoTier 2y ago[flagged]
- TwoTier 2y ago[flagged]
- 4ndrewl 2y agoqq - if her grave is unmarked, how will we know where to find it to "piss on it"?
- somename9 2y agoHe’s saying that her war efforts led to the British winning, but also led to the loss of their empire, culture, and race.
- lenerdenator 2y agoIt 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 2y agoIn their prime, they too forgot the lessons of their own ancestors struggle.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- potato3732842 2y agoOne 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.
- hhhcard 2y ago[flagged]
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- MaxPock 2y ago[flagged]
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- 0xEF 2y agoIndeed, 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.”
- toomuchtodo 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Webb_(code_breaker) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Webb_(code_breaker)
- tocs3 2y agoFrom 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 2y agothey called them computers for a reason
- hermitShell 2y agoTechnology has changed for sure. Is our usage of human capital any better as a whole? Probably not. So many BS jobs out there.
- cguess 2y agotech has changed, but it's fundamentally doing the exact same job. GCHQ/NSA is still using the techniques pioneered at Bletchley.
- eitland 2y agoMore interestingly IMO: > In Block F, she worked on intercepted Japanese messages, something she excelled at so much that she was later sent to Washington to support the American war effort.[6]
- linsomniac 2y agoSomewhat unrelated: I'm hoping to go to Bletchley Park this summer, any recommendations?
- cjs_ac 2y agoThe 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/ https://www.tnmoc.org/
- tialaramex 2y agoAlso, 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 2y agoWe 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 )
- icosian 2y agoOnly 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/ https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0318/1502596-hemingway/
- andrepd 2y agoIt'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 2y agothe 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 2y agosocial 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.
- kiba 2y agoIt is rather lazy that people 'prefer' patriotic history and 'disciplined workforce'. I see no evidence of this. I do gather that some parents are rather sanctimonious and scandalized about their children learning anything but the most sanitized version of history. That seems so far to be the most presence in banning anything. Witness Harry Potter being listed as one of the most challenged book at the height of popularity. History as it was taught in my grade school years certainly wasn't whitewashed and they are rather explicit about some of the horror. Moreover, the problem is that history wasn't taught well and made 'boring'.
- billfruit 2y agoAny good book that delves into the detail of the code breaking done at Bletchley park?
- AndrewOMartin 2y agoThe 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.
- hermitShell 2y agoIf 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 2y agoOr Enigma by Robert Harris.
- jtcond13 2y ago"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 2y ago
- juliangamble 2y agoI 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 2y agoI 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 2y ago>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 2y agoYes, 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 2y agoAnd he defeated him twice. In the desert in 1942 and in France in 1944. Not bad for a crap General.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
- GcryptUser 2y ago[dead]
- peterburkimsher 2y ago@dang For the sake of Dave Täht and Betty Webb, I believe a black bar is justified even on the 1st of April.
- hhhcard 2y ago[flagged]
- sgt 2y agoOvershadowed by Val Kilmer's death - I hope more people read this article! What a lady... RIP
- kitd 2y ago> She and her guests were treated to a fly-past by a Lancaster bomber. She said at the time: "It was for me - it's unbelievable isn't it? Little me." That's fantastic! RIP.
- damnitbuilds 2y agoDid her colleagues use to say "My first computer was a ... Betty Webb" ?