Tom Briggs graduated in mathematics with astronomy and was a teacher before joining the Bletchley Park Trust as the education officer for Enigma. He travels the country demonstrating the iconic code-breaking technology to schools and groups.
How do you approach such a hands-on historical role?
Well, I wake up on the morning of a visit and think: “I’d better go and put the Enigma machine in the car.” And then I think: “Hang on, the Enigma machine?” How many people start their day like that? Enigma, for me, represents a nexus, the inter-connectedness of mathematics and other disciplines and one where maths made an immense difference.
Many of the code-breaking geniuses were recruited for their skills, interest and experience in maths. My job is to bring this piece of equipment to life and show people not only its place in the history of code-breaking but also in their own histories, too.
What are the common misconceptions about Enigma?
The main one is that after not being able to understand the cipher for a couple of years, we made a huge breakthrough after which everyone at Bletchley Park put their feet up for the rest of the war.
Different codes needed to be cracked every day by 200 networks of Enigma. But some details will never be told. When I meet veterans now and ask them what they did, some of them simply say: “I worked at Bletchley Park.” They’re aware the secrecy has been lifted, but they still don’t feel they can morally reveal anything. Good on them.
How did you make the move from teaching?
I enjoy helping people learn new things but I didn’t like the admin or the stick teachers receive from non-educationalists. One Sunday night at the end of February half-term and I had that back-to-school feeling so I was procrastinating on Twitter. A message popped up asking teachers if they fancied a change of career and I thought “Right now, yes I do.” It was a link for the job advert and everyone reckoned it was my dream post.
You did have a novel approach to CPD, though.
A group of teachers on Twitter got together in a field in Yorkshire to do their own CPD and I carried out some daytime astronomy because I thought it was a bit different and, quite honestly, I like to mess about with geeky things.
We built a model of the solar system to give everyone some idea of sizes and distances using things like spacehoppers and apples. The demonstration got so far before we realised that Pluto would have ended up being in a pub on a distant hill.
