WWII Science & Technology: The Race That Changed Everything - Part 8: The Misfits of Bletchley Park: How Eccentrics Broke Unbreakable Codes
Key Takeaways The Recruitment Strategy: Crossword puzzle competitions, chess clubs, and mathematics departments. They wanted brilliant misfits, not military officers. The Tolerance Paradox: Wartime necessity forced the military to tolerate people it would normally exclude—and discovered they were irreplaceable. The Turing Example: Autistic traits that made Alan Turing impossible in conventional settings made him perfect for seeing patterns no one else could see. The Lesson: The problems that matter most are often solved by people who don't fit the systems designed for ordinary problems. The Tragedy: After the war, the same establishment that relied on these misfits discarded and persecuted them. The Problem with Normal People In 1938, the British government faced an impossible problem: the German Enigma machine. ...