In 1985, Gordon Welchman sent 12 boxes to his son in Connecticut.

He kept copies of every letter he ever received.

He kept copies of every letter he sent, it seems.

Now, the family, when I discovered that he'd sent it,

they always assumed that maybe he was worried about

the National Security Agency who had concerns about him after the publication of his book,

that they might be knocking on his door. But I suspect in thinking about it, just the last day or two,

Welchman's son Nick, who tragically passed away a year or so ago, was instrumental in helping me

with his book. He was a research

librarian, and as Jenny, Nick's daughter said, as a research librarian, you'd think he would

know what to do with it. But equally, he obviously knew not to throw it away. Your mother would

have gladly thrown it away, as she told me. And Gordon's last wife, Tini, also would have thrown it away.

So maybe that is why he sent it. But anyway, this material was kept there from

1985 until my visit in 2011, and it was a treasure trove indeed.

One of the interesting things about Bletchie Park is everyone who worked there seems to be a codebreaker,

even the people who worked in the canteen.

And I guess it's a generic word, we say, people are codebreakers.

But Gordon Welshman was not really a codebreaker.

He did try his hand at it, and he could do it, but he's the guy that put the whole production line approach

together he for some reason he was an algebraic geometer he had the vision to recognize that they

would be getting thousands of encrypted messages a day the old style approach of one man who does

everything simply didn't scale he's the one who drew up this production line plan this idea

...