Sir Dermot Turing

Sir Dermot Turing looks at the story of Enigma codebreaking.

What were the relative roles of Bletchley Park and the US codebreaking agencies?

How was Alan Turing able to make his breakthrough innovation of the Bombe so rapidly at the beginning of World War II?

What lessons can we learn about international cooperation in intelligence?

Biography:

Dermot Turing is the acclaimed author of Prof, a biography of his famous uncle, The Story of Computing, and most recently the award-winning X, Y and Z – the real story of how Enigma was broken. He is also a regular speaker at historical and other events. He began writing in 2014 after a career in law. Dermot worked for the Government Legal Service and then the international law firm Clifford Chance, where he was a partner until 2014. His specialism was financial sector regulation, particularly the problems associated with failed banks, and financial market infrastructure. As well as writing and speaking, Dermot is a trustee of the Turing Trust. He is the Bletchley Park Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, Oxford. He continues his interest in the financial world.

Ms. Deborah Ann Anderson

During his early tenure at NCR, Joseph Desch established a unique expertise of exploring thyratron tubes as reliable high-speed switches.  A Prof. Herman Heil who experimented with both inert gases and electric grids to manipulate the electron emissions in his thyratron tubes furthered Desch’s concept. This likely to be an early demonstration of Quantum Mechanics to stabilize high-speed switching.  More leads from Joe Desch’s records about his early contacts with physicists Saul Dushman of General Electric and Herman Heil of The Ohio State Univerisity and others need to be pursued to outline his early thinking about Quantum Mechanics.

Biography:

Ms. Deborah Ann Anderson is a native of Dayton and the daughter of Joseph Desch who lead the top-secret Navy Waves NCR Codebreakers project during World War II.  As she uncovered the stories, documents and artifacts related to the technical accomplishments associated with her father and his team, she established and currently maintains the Dayton Codebreakers webpage (http://daytoncodebreakers.org) and PBS documentary.  She has been an advocate ensuring that all those who assigned to the US Bombes project were recognized for their service and have their story told to their families.  Deborah has served as a Board member for the Dayton Engineers Club, Ohio Valley Chapter of the Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association, and is member of the National Cryptologic Museum Foundation.  She is co-author of peer-reviewed journal articles on the history of computing and continues to promote the impact and importance of technology past, present and future.