Dear Fellow Members
The next meeting of the Computer Conservation Society for the 2025/26 season is on Thursday May 21st 2026 at 2.30pm. The subject is a Misread Signals. How History Overlooked Women Codebreakers.
Our speaker is an old friend of the CCS, Dermot Turing. It will be a hybrid meeting with the lecture being given at the BCS London meeting room which is at 25 Copthall Avenue, London EC2R 7BP (near Moorgate tube) with an option for interactive participation
via Zoom.
The Zoom link for the lecture will be https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87490007950.
A waiting room will be in operation.
About the seminar
Bletchley Park is remembered as a land of male intellectuals who were supported by a staff of women in menial roles, with figures such as Alan Turing, William Tutte and John Tiltman taking
centre stage. These are the men who helped sway the course of the war in the Allies’ favour. But, as is often the case in the historical record, this is not the whole story. Women were not just secretaries and assistants: they had serious full-on codebreaking
roles. Somehow, when the histories were written, these women were left out. Who were they? What did they achieve? How did they ‘vanish’? In Misread Signals, codebreaking historian Dermot Turing turns his attention to these long-ignored women and puts their
contributions back in the spotlight where they belong.
.About the speaker
Dermot Turing is the award-winning author of X, Y and Z – the real story of how Enigma was broken and Enigma Traitors, which reveals the failings of Allied cipher security during World War II. His most recent book is Misread Signals
– how History Overlooked Women Codebreakers, which was published in August 2025. He has written numerous other books relating to his famous uncle Alan Turing, codebreaking and computing history. He began writing in 2014 after a career in law, principally at
the international law firm Clifford Chance. As well as writing and speaking, Dermot is a trustee of the National Museum of Computing and a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, Oxford.
Please pre-register for the event. To do so, follow this linkhttp://www.computerconservationsociety.org/lectures/current/lecture.htm and
click on the “Book” symbol. Please indicate if you intend to participate in person or remotely. Remote participants will be notified of the URL for the Zoom link a few days in advance of the meeting.
Our meetings are open to all free of charge so do pass on this invitation to others who may be interested in this meeting or other CCS activities.
This is the final lecture of the year we will be back in September with the 2026/27 session.
Good wishes
Roger Johnson
CCS London Programme Secretary
+++++++++