Thread by @ajcdeane

#Deanehistory 202.

It is often said with some force that the only good Nazi is a Grammar Nazi. Those guilty of grammatical errors and typographical solecisms, especially online, may seem – and this will shock you – ungrateful when their mistake is pointed out,

but plainly providing such helpful feedback is God’s work.

Thus it is with a divided mind that your correspondent relays the story of The Good Typo. For which, hat tip @BlueEarthMngmnt.

When the Second World War broke out, British boffins (why should the tabloid media be the only ones to use the term?) began the process of building a codebreaking team at Bletchley Park. Whilst well documented in some ways, their work has been somewhat challenging for historians

with regard to lots of the details, as the thousands of people involved stuck rigidly – to the last man and woman concerned – to the requirement for secrecy during and after their work there. And I don’t mean for a month or two, either.

I mean even thirty years after the events concerned. In an age in which the telling comes so swiftly on the heels of the kissing that it sometimes seems even to precede it, there is something to be taken from this example.

Anyway, in 1939 – right when things were getting going – one Geoffrey Tandy was summoned to join the team at Bletchley.

A patriot and already a Naval reservist, Tandy was an impeccably credentialed man. He was one of Britain’s – nay, the world’s – leading cryptogamists.

The tiny issue with his deployment is that cryptogamy is the study of plants that reproduce without flowers or seeds. Cryptogamae means "hidden reproduction," as non-seed bearing plants were somewhat of a puzzle before people worked out their use of spores.

Plainly a CRYPTOGAMIST, whilst an undoubted expert in seaweed, mosses and ferns, is a bit of an anomaly in a team of CRYPTOGRAMISTS.

There, in the absence or presence of a single “r,” perhaps added in an HR file by a clerk thinking it had been omitted in error,

or read into the document by someone skim reading whilst trying to staff up a massive endeavour in the face of looming war, sat the explanation for Tandy’s seemingly odd deployment.

But BANZAI! A mere two years of undoubtedly dull thumb twiddling on the team later, Tandy leapt into action! For in 1941, the Royal Navy torpedoed a clutch of German U-boats & the British intelligence services suddenly had an array of waterlogged German documents on their hands.

Why, these top secret files are not only encrypted – they’re in need of an algae specialist! Behold, Tandy’s moment! Our cryptogamist was able to use the right absorbent materials and techniques to dry out the papers whilst not damaging what was written on them –

and the Allies thereby had copies of the instructions of how to decrypt messages received on the Enigma machines.

At its height, the claim can be made, not without merit, that the Enigma breakthrough shortened that bloodiest of conflicts by over a year.

Imagine the loss of life if the conflagration across Europe and around the world had continued for that sort of additional period.

And the Enigma breakthrough would not have occurred, at least as quickly as it did and in the way that it did,

without an algae scientist on the team, deployed because of a typo that was magnificently unhelpful, until it was essential and lifesaving and vital for the lives of millions and the course taken by a global war for the future of mankind.

Adding a hat tip to @WilliamJHague, whose Bletchley Park speech drew attention to this story:

gov.uk/government/spe…