Students got to see the machine that enabled German messages to be deciphered and was the turning point in the Second World War.

Twelve Year 12 and 13 A level Computer Science students from Haslingden High School and Sixth Form saw the subject come to life on a visit Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes.

Computer science teacher David Ferguson said: “We went to Bletchley Park and into The National Museum of Computing, which is in one of the huts and contains replicas of the machines that were used to decrypt codes.”

Students took part in a lecture on past, current and future cryptology which was directly linked to their A-level studies.

Both Thomas Brien, 17, and Aidan Tams, 18, had already studied encryption as a module in their A-level course and both said the visit to Bletchley Park made the subject more visual.

Aidan said: “It was pretty good and there was a lot of hands-on and that made it more visual and very easy for us to follow.”

Thomas said: “I found it very interesting seeing the different huts, the different tasks and how they deciphered codes using the Bombe Machine.”

The Bombe Machine, an electromechanical code-breaking machine, was developed by scientist Alan Turing in 1939 and used to decode German messages that had been encrypted using an Enigma machine.

The pair want to become games developers after completing a degree at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Aidan added: “I have already designed a couple of games. One is a basic runner that jumps over spikes to get points and another is an Open World game on a 2D platform where you have enemies that attack and you have special abilities.”