Ralph Tester facts for kids

Ralph Paterson Tester (born June 2, 1902 – died May 1998) was a very important person at Bletchley Park during World War II. Bletchley Park was a secret British station where experts worked to break enemy codes. Ralph Tester was in charge of a special team called the Testery. Their big job was to break a super-secret German code called Tunny.

What Was the Lorenz Cipher?

The Lorenz cipher machine was a very advanced and complex German coding machine. It had twelve wheels, making it much harder to crack than the three-wheeled Enigma. The Germans used Lorenz to send their most secret messages. These messages went between the German Army Headquarters in Berlin and their top generals and field-marshals on the battlefields. Even Adolf Hitler himself used this secure system for his messages.

Before the War

Before World War II began, Ralph Tester worked as an accountant. He had spent a lot of time working in Germany. This meant he knew the German language and culture very well. He even held a senior job in the accounting department of a big company called Unilever.

When the war started, he first worked for the BBC Monitoring Service. This service listened to German public radio broadcasts to gather information.

Cracking Codes at Bletchley Park

Ralph Tester was later asked to join the secret team at Bletchley Park. In late 1941, he became the leader of a small group. They were working on a different German code used by the military police.

The Testery Team

The famous Testery section was officially started in July 1942. Ralph Tester was its leader. Three other original members were also very skilled. They were codebreakers and linguists: Captain Jerry Roberts, Peter Ericsson, and Major Denis Oswald. All four of them spoke German fluently.

The Testery team used special hand methods to break the messages that were coded by the Tunny machine. This was incredibly hard work! Within just one year of its start, the Testery managed to decode 1.5 million messages by hand. By the end of the war in May 1945, the Testery had grown much larger. It had nine main codebreakers and a total staff of 118 people. They worked in three different shifts, around the clock.

Jerry Roberts, who was a senior codebreaker in the Testery, remembered Ralph Tester well. He said that Tester was calm and always smoked his pipe. He spoke fluent German but didn't pretend to be a codebreaker himself. Roberts said that the atmosphere in the Testery was always positive and friendly. Ralph Tester was very good at choosing the right people for the right jobs. Thanks to Tester's leadership, the work of the Testery was very well organized.

Towards the end of the war in Europe, Ralph Tester was part of a special team called TICOM. This team went to Germany. Their mission was to find out more about Germany's secret communication technology, including the TUNNY machines.

After the War

After the war ended, Ralph Tester went back to his old job at Unilever.

See also

• Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher
• Testery
• Newmanry
• Bill Tutte