Slashdot Mirror

mikejuk writes "Bletchley Park has secured a £4.6 million Heritage Lottery Fund Grant for the establishment of a visitor center dedicated to the World War II Codebreakers. This year saw the unveiling of a new memorial to the Codebreakers in the grounds of Bletchley Park by the Queen. Shortly after her visit, a new fundraising campaign for the restoration of the iconic huts where the code-breaking teams worked was inaugurated, with help and sponsorship from Google. The grant will enable the restoration of Codebreaking Huts 1, 3 and 6, and create a world-class visitor center and exhibition in the currently derelict Block C. The Bletchley Park Trust has launched the 'Action This Day' campaign to raise the match funding now needed."

hardsix writes "Despite the numerous films, books and plays, celebrating the brilliant achievements of the code-breakers at Bletchley Park, the UK government is still dragging its feet over providing proper support for the site. There has just been a debate in the House of Lords over whether the site should be given similar status to the UK's main WWII museum — the Imperial War Museum. But the government has brushed off the request, claiming that the site has received enough funding recently. However, as was shown by a visit to the site by UK actor, and Twitter-lover Stephen Fry, although devices such as Enigma have been restored many of the huts where the code-breaking work went on are in a bad state and more investment is needed."

toxcspdrmn writes "Volunteers at Bletchley Park have recreated a working replica of the electromechanical bombe used to crack the Germans' Enigma encryption. The bombe was designed by Polish cryptologists and refined by Alan Turing and colleagues at Bletchley Park. The replica joins a recreated electronic Colossus — generally considered the first electronic computer. Impressive work when you consider that Winston Churchill ordered the originals to be completely destroyed at the end of WWII."

CubicStar writes "Sixty years ago, Vannnevar Bush published on 'Atlantic Monthly' his seminal article on the Memex, that computer-like device which would provide access to a huge amount of interlinked information. At the time computers were experimental and secret but a visionary (with a shadowy edge) proposed something which even today looks at least influential."

The below review was contributed by reader Lozzer, and deals with a book about one of the most fascinating figures in mathematics history (and cryptograhic history in particular). Nearly half a century after his suicide, Alan Turing is still fascinating and relevant on several levels.

Alan Turing: The Enigma author Andrew Hodges pages 587 publisher Walker & Company rating 8.5 reviewer Lozzer ISBN 0802775802 summary A wide-ranging look at one of the most important mathematical minds, before, during and after his role in breaking WWII codes.

I recently finished reading Andrew Hodge's excellent biography of Alan Turing. The second edition was printed in 1992. It included updates based on material declassified by the British Government (Amazon has a 2000 edition, I'm not sure if this is a rewrite or a reprint). Weighing in at nearly 600 pages the book is not for the faint hearted Geek.

For our younger Script Kiddies I'll give a brief overview of Turing's life and what he has to do with computing. He was born in London in 1912 and christened Alan Mathison Turing. After a public school up-bringing he studied maths at King's College, Cambridge from 1931. In 1935 he solved part of one of the great mathematical problems of the time: Hilbert's Second Problem. Godel had solved the first two parts. Turing solved the last part about deciding which mathematical statements were true. His construction for solving this problem was the Turing Machine. This model forms the basis for all modern day computers.

Between this breakthrough and the war, Turing spent a couple of years at Princeton, where he studied under Alonzo Church and John von Neumann, both of whom where pioneers in the computing field.

With the onset of war in 1939 Turing found himself employed as a code breaker at Bletchley Park (which is only a couple of miles from where I live). This is where Turing's theoretical knowledge began to take physical shape. By the end of the war the Colossus had been built. This is sometimes touted as the first computer, though I'll leave that to people with flame retartant underpants. Suffice it to say this "computer" could only be programmed by reconfiguring the hardware.

After the war Turing gravitated to the University of Manchester where he took a role in developing the first prototype computer that was "software" programmable. After that he became a programmer, using the computer to help with mathematical theories. He was convicted of Gross Indecency (Turing was a homosexual) in 1952, and had to suffer a year of oestrogen injections to "cure" him. He committed suicide in 1954.

After that potted history, back to the book. It draws on a lot of sources and manages to bring them together in a very coherent whole. As well as providing a British view of the history of computing it also gives an interesting perspective on the changes in society over the years. The book also conveys Turing's breadth of knowledge and vision well - while most computer users were thinking of mathematical problems he was into AI, chess and other abstract symbolism. He figured out the need for subroutines, was the first to use binary (he noted that routines could change the external notation for human consumption, but continued to use 32 bit numbers entered in reverse order himself). He considered hardware acceleration. The author does well in explaining the scientific portions of the book in a clear and correct fashion. From a Geek perspective the text is possibly a bit dense, with some less interesting chunks (the homosexual aspects of Turing's life, for example, have less impact now than when the book was first published).

I recommend the book if you are interested in some of the wider aspects of Turing's life. For me, being British, having a Cambridge maths degree (ooh shameless), and living near Bletchley brings a lot more of the book to life that it may for most. If you are only interested in Turing's impact on the world of computers there are good online resources for this. Maybe, however, you won't find out why Christopher Strachey was the world's first Hacker."

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

What to do with your collection of AOL CDs, an antique drill and a flourescent bulb? Anxious to know what happened to the missing Enigma rotors? Want to go digging with gopher, but with your Web browser? Read on for more info.

No sir, we can't keep sending you more. guido_sst writes: "The winners of the Great AOL CD Invention Contest sponsored by UltimateChaos have been announced at http://www.ultimatechaos.com/contest/. Winners include two lamps, a clock, and a 'scaled' car."

Also, the DVD-grabber style cases that AOL is spreading right now make a nice way to give your relatives pictures on CD-ROM, once you slip in your own insert sheet.

Now you can read all your letters from Mom again. Remember the Enigma machine cleverly stolen and cleverly returned from Bletchley Park? You may recall that though the apparatus itself was returned, the all-important Enigma rotors were not recovered at that time. Now you can stop holding your breath, because evilandi writes: "ThisIsGloucestershire, the website of the local newspaper covering UK spy centre GCHQ's home town of Cheltenham, have this story telling how the police have finally recovered all the missing rotors for the stolen Enigma historic wartime encryption device. Without the rotors, the Enigma device returned to the BBC would have been useless. This brings the stolen Enigma story to a close; a man was arrested and the entire Enigma device is now complete and back in safe hands. The working Enigma device should be back on display at Bletchley Park soon."

Yes, I'd like one copy of "Gopher Hunt," please? emanuel writes: "After reading the gopher:// manifesto, it got me to do something that I had been considering for some time: move my internet presence into gopherspace and out of the Web. The problem: few people have a gopher browser, and most Web browsers have poor (Internet Explorer) to non-existent (Netscape 6) gopher support. The solution: write a gopher-to-Web gateway which will allow anyone with a web browser to navigate gopherspace. And while I'm at it, why not add WML support to let mobile phone users into gopherspace as well (after all, gopher is well suited for wireless devices)? So after a few evenings of mad coding, I have something that works fairly well (but is far from complete). See the webgopher project at gopher://gopher.heatdeath.org/. It's Free, and I'd love some involvement from other gopherheads." Greetings to my 7th Grade English teacher Note that the next installment of Hellmouth Revisited is now online.

evilandi writes "Bletchley Park, "home of the WW2 codebreakers and [allegedly!] the world's first electronic programmable computer" (Colossus I), has been saved following this deal with British Telecom. The historic site will be converted into part museum, part conference centre and part education resource- all specifically crypto oriented. WW2 hacker HQ "D-Block" (the precursor to GCHQ) will be restored along with the lovely grounds and manor house. "

evilandi writes "Bletchley Park, "home of the WW2 codebreakers and [allegedly!] the world's first electronic programmable computer" (Colossus I), has been saved following this deal with British Telecom. The historic site will be converted into part museum, part conference centre and part education resource- all specifically crypto oriented. WW2 hacker HQ "D-Block" (the precursor to GCHQ) will be restored along with the lovely grounds and manor house. "

evilandi writes "Bletchley Park, "home of the WW2 codebreakers and [allegedly!] the world's first electronic programmable computer" (Colossus I), has been saved following this deal with British Telecom. The historic site will be converted into part museum, part conference centre and part education resource- all specifically crypto oriented. WW2 hacker HQ "D-Block" (the precursor to GCHQ) will be restored along with the lovely grounds and manor house. "