Science and Industry Museum to reopen with Top Secret exhibition

Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum will reopen on Wednesday 19th May – and with it comes a brand new exhibition.

Called Top Secret: from ciphers to cyber security, the exhibition will celebrate a century’s worth of British communications intelligence and cyber security. 

It will uncover fascinating stories from the First World War to the latest in cyber security via hand-written documents, declassified files and artefacts from the historic collections of the Science Museum Group and GCHQ – the UK’s intelligence and cyber agency.  

Among stories from across a century of secret security, visitors can explore the story of Alan Turing and the team of Bletchley Park codebreakers who broke the Enigma code; uncover spy rings that operated during the Cold War; and test their skills in the exhibition’s interactive puzzle zone. 

Top Secret has been curated by the Science Museum Group with the help of expert advisors GCHQ.

Visitors to the installation in the museum’s newly opened Special Exhibitions Gallery will also hear from GCHQ staff who perform top secret work to maintain digital security and keep the country safe from a range of threats and hostile actors.

“We are grateful to Raytheon UK for their support, which has enabled us to make Top Secret free for all visitors to the Science Museum and Industry Museum,” says museum director Sally MacDonald.

“In doing so, we hope to engage and inspire even more people with this important exhibition. 

“Our museum tells the stories of Manchester’s pioneering past and ideas that started here and went on to change the world.

“STEM skills have been at the heart of this innovation, and I’m delighted that we’re hosting Top Secret, which showcases the incredible heights that can be achieved through the application of these skills, at a time when the importance of STEM across the region is more important than ever.” 

Top Secret will launch at the Science and Industry Museum on Wednesday 19th May, the first day of the museum’s reopening following the national lockdown, and will run until Tuesday 31st August. You can find out more here.