A TALK entitled Spies, Boffins and Computer Nerds was the first in this year?s series of ?Oracle? lectures at Mount House School, Tavistock. The speaker was Mount House parent Peter Malcolm who gave children, parents and teachers an insight into the world of international military and commercial intelligence. He started with an account of the invention and development of the Enigma encoding machines in the 1920s and their use by Nazi Germany. Mr Malcolm explained how encryption had developed since the war, becoming more sophisticated with the aid of microprocessors, enabling banks to use the internet for secure communications.