BREMONT CODEBREAKER
British watch brand BREMONT, in association with Bletchley Park Trust will create the limited edition Codebreaker, timepiece that will be incorporating historical artifacts from Bletchley Park. The watch is unlike any other watch ever created and in addition a percentage of the proceeds will be used towards the ongoing restoration of Bletchley Park.
Bletchley Park played an extremely important role in British history. During WWII it was converted into a code breaking factory and became the site of the United Kingdom’s main decryption establishment, the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS,) where ciphers and codes were decrypted most famously the ciphers generated by the German Enigma and Lorenz machines.
By inventing and using ingenious machines and novel manual techniques to crack German ciphers, the 9,000 scientists, mathematicians and other crucial supporting staff are said to have helped shorten the war by at least two years and saved countless lives. Inspired by a classic 40’s officer’s watch, the Codebreaker will be made with a beautiful and unique Flyback chronograph GMT automatic movement and will in corporate some relevant Historical artifacts from Bletchley Park; pine from the iconic Hut6 (the centre of the operations to decrypt the German Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe Engima ciphers) and paper from one of the few remaining punch cards (used to analyse the vast amount of coded data created from the daily Enigma communications.) Part of the rotor of the watch will be made from the wheel of an original Enigma machine. 240 steel Code breaker watches will be created and 50 rose gold watches.
Both Giles and nick were inspired by the Bombe machine and the rotor balance is based on the Bombe’s drums. Each watch will have its limited edition number embedded into the case barrel, which will be made of Bakelite as per the original Bombe machine. Hut 6 is part of the current restoration programe and fragments of its floor boards, on which code breaking giants, such as Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman walked, have been incorporated into the watch crown.
For decades, the World War Two Code breaking centre at Bletchley Park was one of the UK’s most closely guarded secrets. Today, it’s an emotional place to visit and reflect on the achievements of those who worked there. Their outstanding feats of intellect, coupled with breakthrough engineering and dogged determination, were crucial to the Allied victory and in parallel, helped kick start the computing age.
