Breaking the Code Breaking the Code Breaking the Code is a 1986 play by Hugh Whitemore about British mathematician Alan Turing, who was a key player in the breaking of the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park during World War II and a pioneer of computer science. The play thematically links Turing's cryptographic activities with his attempts to grapple with his homosexuality. It was adapted as a 1996 television film directed by Herbert Wise, with Derek Jacobi reprising his stage role as Turing. Following an eight-month run at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in London's West End beginning on 21 October 1986, the play
Cryptanalysis of the Enigma Knox (a veteran of World War I and the cryptanalytical activities of the Royal Navy's Room 40), worked on decipherment he had only the messages he generated himself to practice with. After Germany supplied modified commercial machines to the Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War, and with the Italian Navy (who were also aiding the Nationalists) using a version of the commercial Enigma that did not have a plugboard, Britain could intercept the radio broadcast messages. In April 1937 Knox made his first decryption of an Enigma encryption using a technique that he called "buttoning up" to discover the