Ralph Tester

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Ralph P.[1] Tester was an administrator at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking station during World War II. He founded and supervised a section named the Testery, whose task was to solve a high-grade German teleprinter cipher codenamed "Tunny".

Before World War II, Tester was an accountant who had worked extensively in Germany and as a result was very familiar with the German language and culture.[2] He held a senior position in the accountancy division of Unilever.[3]

On the outbreak of war, he worked for the BBC Monitoring Service which listened in to German public radio broadcasts.[4] He was later recruited to Bletchley Park, and during early 1942 was the head of a small group working on a double Playfair cipher used by German military police.[5] This group formed the kernel of the "Testery", formed in July 1942.[5] Initially staffed by a handful of codebreakers, by May 1945 the Testery employed 118 people.[5] Tester held the rank of Captain,[2] then Major,[6] and later, Colonel.[7]

A former Testery codebreaker, Jerry Roberts, recalls that, "The imperturbable, pipe-smoking Tester spoke fluent German, but did not pretend to be a codebreaker. The atmosphere in his unit was always positive and friendly, and the personnel were well selected — Tester seemed to find the right niche for everybody. Thanks to Tester's influence the work of the Testery was very well organised."[3]

Towards the end of the European war, Tester was part of a TICOM team, a mission sent to Germany to discover information about their communications technology, including Tunny machines.[8] After the war, Tester returned to Unilever.[9]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Jack Good, Donald Michie, and Geoffrey Timms, General Report on Tunny With Emphasis on Statistical Methods, 14(A), p. 28, PRO HW 25/4 and HW 25/5
  2. ^ a b Paul Gannon, Colossus: Bletchley Park's Greatest Secret, 2006, p. 168, Atlantic Books, ISBN 1-84354-330-3
  3. ^ a b Jerry Roberts, "Major Tester's Section", p. 250 from pp. 249-259 in B. Jack Copeland, ed., Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park's Codebreaking Computers, Oxford University Press, 2006
  4. ^ Michael Smith, Station X, first ed. 1998, revised 2004, p. 152
  5. ^ a b c Roberts, "Major Tester's Section", p. 250
  6. ^ Gannon, "Colossus", 2006, p. 342
  7. ^ Donald Mitchie, "Codebreaking and Colossus", p. 232 from pp. 223-246 in B. Jack Copeland, ed., Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park's Codebreaking Computers, Oxford University Press, 2006
  8. ^ Smith, Station X, p. 203-204
  9. ^ Roberts, "Major Tester's Section", p. 252
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