Enigma-Cracking Bombe Recreated

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."

Comments

Colossus, you say?

[ettlz]

Does it run NetBSD?

Re:Colossus, you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, its not even turing complete!

Re:Colossus, you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Never mind that - does it run Doom?

Deserved honour, indeed.

[alexwcovington]

It's truly a testiment to the brilliance of these people, that they were able to do so much with so little in the way of computing power. It's a shame that Alan Turing met such an unfortunate fate, with all he did for modern computing.

Re:Deserved honour, indeed.

[joe 155]

I too share your admiration of the fantastic work which was done there.

One of the worst things Churchil did was not allowing the continuation of this project and continual research in the field. As an English man and a Conservative I feel thats been one of our worst own goals... Silicon Vally could have been in Kent (or, even better, Grimsby!). But then again we did something similar to Babage and his difference engine.

Still, it's nice to see what some of the greatest people in the world at the time did in their field, even if it does bring up old regrets...

Re:Deserved honour, indeed.

[TigerTim]

So little? Have a read of Tommy Flower's description of the Colossus. Several processing units in parallel were used to enhance greatly the throughput of the machine. It was not until the era of the 486 that a general-purpose microcomputer was capable of performing the same task that the dedicated colossus performed.

Re:Deserved honour, indeed.

[JohnGrahamCumming]

Turing's death is a warning about the dangers of discriminating against people because they are different.

For all values of 'different'.

John.

Re:Deserved honour, indeed.

[Keebler71]

Indeed...

Alan Turing's colleague Jack Good, however, said on the same television programme that if the security authorities had known about Alan Turing's homosexuality from the beginning, 'we might have lost the war.'

Re:Deserved honour, indeed.

[gosand]

Turing's death is a warning about the dangers of discriminating against people because they are different. For all values of 'different'.

I am currently reading "Alan Turing: The Enigma" (http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/), and while I am not much for biographies, it is pretty good so far. It is quite long and detailed, but I am anxious to get through it. The foreword is by one of my favorite authors, Douglas Hofstadter. Can't wait to get his new book in 2007.

If you are a geek, read Godel Escher Bach, and The Mind's I. And if you really want to tackle something, try Metamagical Themas. It's like a good hot sauce - tasty, yet painful, leaving you wanting more. :)

Re:Deserved honour, indeed.

[Derek Pomery]

And Le Ton beau de Marot

Re:Deserved honour, indeed.

[hughk]

Homosexuality in the UK wasn't really an issue in the forties. It seemed to become one in the fifties connected with communism and largely through pressure from the US. The justification given was that a homosexual could be blackmailed and in any case was considered morally disreputable.

McCarthy had his big thing against communists in the fifties and hhhe also seemed to bring homosexuality into the deal. The reality was in Britain, Guy Burgess was definitely gay and a traitor ausing a lot of damage but there is no evidence at all that Turing ever was anything other than the hard-working patriot.

Re:Deserved honour, indeed.

[2sheds]

> One of the worst things Churchil did was not allowing the continuation of this project

Well, he did allow continuation, it's just that it was under ultratight security in a department that would become today's GCHQ (Government Communications HQ - our equivalent of the NSA). The reason for that security is obvious; he wanted Britain to keep the competitive advantage of being able to spy on friends and allies without anyone being aware of that ability. Go and read up on the history of British SIGINT during the post war years if you're interested. There's a fair bit on Wikipedia about GCHQ and it's precedessor, the Government Code and Cipher School (Bletchley Park to you and me).

Re:Deserved honour, indeed.

[Sarisar]

Well hell the encryption erm... DHA.. erm.. shit I'm drunk and the memory is going.. but the three letter acronym from the three surnames of the guys who invented it in the US that handled the first encryption on the net. That was done by GCHQ a few years before but hushed up as it was top secret.

There was also the thing about the russians reusing one time pads that we (the UK) cracked during the cold war. The UK was always in the forefront of cracking stuff. Unfortunately nowadays we seem useless... /me pines for the days when the whole map was 75% pink!

Re:Deserved honour, indeed.

[femto]

It's a lesson in the cathedral and bazaar.

GCHQ = cathedral

Silicon Valley = bazaar

Which one do you think won?

Re:Deserved honour, indeed.

[gosand]

And Le Ton beau de Marot

I have that book at home, but haven't read it. It is actually my wife's.

When we were dating, we went to a big bookstore. We parted ways, she went for the language section. She was getting her master's in French linguistics at the time. I wandered around to various sections.

We met up about an hour later, each of us with several books. I was excited to have found Metamagical Themas, because I loved Hofstadter's other books I had read. She was excited about the one she found, Le Ton beau de Marot. Then we both realized that the same author wrote them. Very weird.

When she was done with her master's, she considered going for a PhD. When she looked into various programs, one of them was at Indiana University, and there is a chance it would have been working with Hofstadter. It didn't work out, she decided to not pursue the PhD, but I had grand thoughts of deep discussions with Hofstadter over a few beers. :)

Re:Deserved honour, indeed.

[2sheds]

You're probably thinking of RSA, but what you actually mean is Diffie-Hellman, which is similar but a little earlier. It's the kind of thing that happens when you work for the security services; just think what fundamental mathematical discoveries are right now hushed up in the name of national security. Clue: the American NSA claims to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the world (according to its own web site).

As for 'unfortunately nowadays we seem useless' - I'm never one to credit the state with too much but we mere plebs would hardly be party to the latest research at GCHQ! These things are secret for a reason; I'm reminded of the Falklands war when a careless on-the-record remark from an ex-defence minister (something along the lines of 'when we were in government the argentine navy was an open book to us' - sure the exact quote is in Google) led to the Royal Navy loosing key signals intelligence assets, specifically the ability to track Argentine sub(s), right at the crunch point. The RN then had to spend significant fleet time hunting a sub that may or may not have put to sea. What an idiot that man was.

Re:Deserved honour, indeed.

[2sheds]

It really isn't, you know. GCHQ is developing an intelligence asset; Silicon Valley is developing something it can sell. The two are hardly competing ideologies.

Imagine..

[Yetihehe]

Imagine beowulf cluster of these. It would be colossus!

Re:Imagine..

[kwark]

Luckily everone still remembers what happened when Colossus and Guardian decided to work together.

Marian Rejewski

[Ignignot]

How on earth can you mention this device without saying Rejewski's name? He is the one that originally cracked the enigma code, and did all of the hard cryptanalysis long before those guys in the UK got anywhere. He barely gets a footnote in history, while the machines that were built get all of the credit. Ultimately they were just collections of vaccuum tubes - it was Rejewski that gave them a purpose. Turing was brilliant of course and should be revered, but not alone.

Re:Marian Rejewski

[Yetihehe]

Simple. Nobody gives a shit about Poland. So noboby mentions of Rajewski.

Re:Marian Rejewski

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you have:

I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.

in your sig.

Well, I really did submit this story last night and it was rejected.

Re:Marian Rejewski

[ezeecheez]

If it makes you feel better, I recently read 'The Man Who Knew Too Much', a book about Turing, and the author of that book gives Rejewski and his team props...

Re:Marian Rejewski

[Ignignot]

It is in my sig to make fun of story submission whiners. Starting to feel like a good time to change it though.

Re:Marian Rejewski

[JohnGrahamCumming]

Naturally Wikipedia has an excellent article on his contribution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski#The_E nigma_machine

John.

Re:Marian Rejewski

[Mahy]

Turing didn't just wire the thing up: He came up with the approach that allowed them to deal with the plug board.

It is even less well known that Turing's Bombes were unable to solve the 4-wheel Naval Enigma. The 4-wheel Naval Enigma was actually solved by engineers working for NCR in Dayton Ohio, led by Joe Desch. Their contributions were classified until the mid-90s, and so were not well known. See:

1) http://www.daytoncodebreakers.com/
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Desch

Re:Marian Rejewski

[igb]

No one with half an understanding underestimates Rejewski's contributions, but your article is somewhat wide of the mark. Firstly, Rejewski's work focussed on the attacks on the double-encipherment of the message setting in the indicators prior to about 1940. By use of the bomba he was able to produce tables of `males' and `females' which indicated the circumstances under which the double-encipherment of the indicator offered a route into the message settings. Rejewski's method didn't require any knowledge of the plain text, but did crucially depend on the structure of the indicators. His work was replicated in the UK in the construction of Jeffries Sheets.

However, although Turing/Welchman's bombe paid explicit homage to the Polish work in the choice of name, its task was fundamentally different. The bombe provided a means to look for message settings based on the cipher text and conjectured plain text. Its weakness was the requirement for plain text, which was a massive task to obtain through traffic analysis of sterotyped messages, `kisses' with broken systems such as the Dockyard Key, weather reports transmitted in other cipher systems and so on. Its strength was that it was independent of the indicator system, which was one of the easier things to change in the Enigma system.

The Polish contribution lay in the machines themselves, the analysis of the indicator systems and the bomba (bomby? spelling may be wrong): together they showed other people that Enigma could be attacked, and provided a plentiful supply of cribs. Had the Poles not succeeded, it's unlikely that the British could have got the resources for their work. But to claim that the Polish work was the basis for the Bletchley work subsequent to the changes in the indicator system is not right.

And, if we're being picky, there might have been the odd vacumn tube in the implementation of the diagonal board's ``all on or none on'' algorithm. But bombes were essentially mechanical devices. The four-rotor ones must have been amazing to be near...

ian

Re:Marian Rejewski

[Anonymous Coward]

because a whiner whined?

Re:Marian Rejewski

[Ilex]

Actually there is a memorial to the polish cryptologists at Bletchley Park so their contribution has been recognized.

It was actually Marian Rejewski who designed the Cryptologic bomb. Bomba being the polish word for Bomb.

Turing developed the Electro-Mechanical Bomb which was capable of cracking the more sophisticated versions of the Enigma code.

It's well worth taking a trip to Bletchley Park if you get the opportunity.
It's more than just code breaking. It covers the whole history of computing.

Re:Marian Rejewski

[diersing]

Its a shame this post is labeled Flamebait, since its fairly accurate. To the victors go the spoils and when a nation is war torn and occupied, many of it's citizens accomplishments will be diminished as the world power's busy themselves with carrying off it's own heroes.

I first became interested in cryptography from the novel "Enigma" by Robert Harris in the mid-nineties, next time you have a long flight with a lay over check it out. Nothing overly technical, but its interesting to read a story with such a "technical" setting, Dan Brown's "Digital Fortress" comes to mind as well. Again, just something to read when you're forced to ride the cattle haulers.

Re:Marian Rejewski

[Anonymous Coward]

>>To the victors go the spoils and when a nation is war torn and occupied, many of it's citizens accomplishments will be diminished as the world power's busy themselves with carrying off it's own heroes.

Don't you know that history is _always_ defined and written by the winners? And that's the reason we just don't know a lot of stuff. If this can happen to as recent history as WWII, I wonder what we have been learning so far in the name of history!!

Re:Marian Rejewski

[Mattintosh]

I saw a documentary on PBS about the NCR team. Joe Desch basically invented RAM to make a faster Enigma-breaker. It turns out he made a general enough design for the machines that they could extend them to break the 4-digit Enigma.

Re:Marian Rejewski

[igb]

That may have been one source of bombes for the 4-wheel Enigma (Triton / Neptune). Doc Keen or British Tabulators also built extensions to the Turing Bombe to cope with the fourth wheel, by simple running the existing three rather faster and adding a fourth, slow wheel. The original design had been quite conservative with regard to the counter used to test for `drops', and given the experience of operation they could speed the whole design up fairly easily. It's documented in Strip's book of essays, `Codebreakers', at least.

Re:Marian Rejewski

[Drooling Iguana]

So where are our North Vietnamese history books?

Re:Marian Rejewski

[hughk]

The Poles were important. They obtained a lot of the initial information about the Enigma machine and its weaknesses. Turing turned the breaking of Enigma into something that could be run on an assembly line.

If you go to Bletchley Park, you will see that all the early work was acknowledged. However, with all so much German high command communications going via Enigma, there was no possibility of securing the plaintexts without the system at BP. Forget the mechanisation, there was also a vast human organisation around it which facilitated the decrypts.

The same methods o 'mass-production' were turned to othersystems such as fish and tunny.

Re:Marian Rejewski

[solitas]

Finally, somebody else who appreciates Rejewski's work!

Plainly, he was the giant 'upon whose shoulders everyone else stood' when it came to defeating the Enigma process.

A decent place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski

Re:Marian Rejewski

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. The Poles had information from the German Embassy in Warsaw, and Radio Intelligence that they couldn't break. Rejewski did the initial great work. He was breaking codes for IF I RECALL CORRECTLY at least 11 months and passing information to Britain. When Warsaw was about to fall or just after, he had help escaping, and all of his information passed to Bletchley. From 1939-41, Bletchley was the place. But the Germans changed the code and Bletchley was out of business for at least 6 months. The break they got was the short weather cipher and stolen encoding documents from a sunken U boat (watch the end of U571 for the actual crew which stole the information). The man leading the raid died, but was honored nationally as a hero, even though his widow didn't know why Churchill et. al. and 10,000 other high ranking uniforms were honoring him. The short weather cipher meant that the code was only 1/3 as hard to break each day. About that time, National Cash Register with the US Navy set up massive cryptographic machines in Washington DC which were roughly 70 times as fast as the Bombe. They could break in 12 hours what took the English roughly 35 days. They would record all of the German traffic for the day, break one of the messages, find the code of the day, break all of the rest based on the found code-of-the-day, and read all German traffic. They were 12 hours behind the Germans from late 1941 on.

Re:Marian Rejewski

[slawekk]

Here is a link to an NSA publication on the subject: Solving the Enigma

Re:Marian Rejewski

[Anonymous Coward]

many of it's citizens
carrying off it's own heroes

"its".

the world power's busy themselves

"powers".

in the mid-nineties, next time you have

"mid-nineties; the next" or "mid-nineties. The next".

with a lay over check it out

"lay-over, check" or "layover, check".

but its interesting to read a story

"it's".

a "technical" setting, Dan Brown's

"setting; Dan" or "setting. Dan".

Collossus is not a computer

[Bender_]

Collossus is not a computer, it was not freely programmable. It was merely able to do pattern matching with a couple of LFSRs. This is still miles from a turing complete machine.

Re:Collossus is not a computer

[TigerTim]

I guess fortunately for them they were trying to win a war, and not build a Turing-complete computer :-) The novelty of Colossus was that it successfully used 1500 valves without a prohibitively high failure rate --- it was not at all obvious that this was possible at the time and largely due to the oft-unsung hero Tommy Flowers. (But you knew all that already)

Re:Collossus is not a computer

[Ilex]

Yes Colossus is a digital computer. It was partially re-programmable. I think you were thinking of the bomba which is simply an Electro-Mechanical device.

Colossus was used to break the Lorenz SZ 40/42 cipher used for communicating between high level members of Hitler's regime. The Lorenz teleprinter had 12 rotors as opposed to the 4 wheels on the Enigma. The bomba was uses to break the 4 wheel Enigma.

Because the Colossus machine was highly classified for many years Tommy Flowers and his team were deprived of the recognition they deserve.

Re:Collossus is not a computer

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

WIkipedia states that it was not turing complete, although some programing was achivable by rewiring. But isn't it ironic that the computer that Turing helped create wasn't turring complete?

Re:Collossus is not a computer

[clap_hands]

Only if Turing helped create Colossus, but he didn't, or at least, he did only very indirectly.

Re:Collossus is not a computer

[fatphil]

Your PC isn't Turing Complete.
Blue Gene isn't Turing Complete.

Of course Colossus was't Turing Complete.

FatPhil

Re:Collossus is not a computer

[inviolet]

Useless objection. We all understand that Turing-completeness requires infinite memory. So, when we say that a machine is Turing-complete, we are understood to mean "This machine is Turing-complete qua available memory".

Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't realize that you were disrupting the conversation just to show off your alleged mental prowess.

Re:Collossus is not a computer

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Turing's Bombe was used to break the 3-rotor Enigma, in use up unti 1943. Joe Desch, working for NCR in Dayton, built the machines that decrypted the 4-rotor Enigma.

Bobme

[CrankyWorm]

bombe Pronunciation (bm, bôb) n. A dessert consisting of two or more layers of variously flavored ice cream frozen in a round or melon-shaped mold. WTF?

Re:Bobme

[catbutt]

From Wikipedia:

In the history of cryptography, a bombe was an electromechanical machine used by British and American codebreakers to help break German Enigma machine signals during World War II. The bombe was invented by Alan Turing with an important refinement suggested by Gordon Welchman. Using the Turing-Welchman bombe, the Allies were able to read a high proportion of the German Enigma traffic, and it was the primary tool used for this purpose.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe

Re:Bobme

[gEvil (beta)]

I hear they were quite tasty, too, which must be why Churchill ordered them all to be "destroyed."

Re:Bobme

[nbvb]

Yes. Yes it is.

Re:Bobme

[The MAZZTer]

I wrote a term paper on the Enigma. The bombe was possibly named after the dessert you found a definition of. Another possible reason for the name was the ticking sound that it made as it ran, which stopped if it had found a possible solution.

Re:Bobme

[Mahy]

I believe Rejewski and his team did in fact name the Bombe machine after the Bombe, their favorite desert.

Why?

[neoshroom]

Anyone know why Churchill ordered it destroyed? I don't quite understand the purpose of doing so.

Re:Why?

[TigerTim]

One possible explanation is that Churchill believed it to be stategically unwise for the rest of the world to know that Britain had such an advanced codebreaking capability. The usefulness of the Bletchley Park operation of course lay in the fact that the Germans believed Enigma was uncrackable. Of course, the military desire for secrecy (cynics might refer to it as paranoia) usually means the question is turned on it's head: rather than "why destroy this?" the question asked is "why should we make this public?".

Re:Why?

[igb]

I'm not sure it's entirely true, anyway. The claim's always made that the reason the British didn't reveal that they'd broken Enigma (in the way in which the Americans rapidly documented the breaks into Red and Purple as soon as the war was over) was that the British were selling Enigma to misguided European powers, advertising it as the German's finest, without revealing they'd broken into it. For this story to make sense, the British would have to have retained the ability to break into Enigma.

It's always rumoured that Collossi were in service at Cheltenham into the sixties, attacking various Fish-style machine baudot-code ciphers. It doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that a bombe or two were kept as well: with the use of the diagonal board, they were probably faster than an emulation in a computer would have been.

ian

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Churchill considered what they were doing to be Top Secret and he wanted it kept that way. Churchill never mentioned "Ultra" as the code cracking was called, in his books, speaches or to anyone. It was truly a secret for a long time. Many men carried it to their graves.
Unlike today, where it would be on CNN broadcast to everyone with a TV what was being done.

Re:Why?

[zmollusc]

I think it was so that nobody would try to make a better encryption than enigma, just variations on it. Thus the codebreakers would have a head start at cracking any postwar encrypted traffic.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Churchill, like Bush, was a variation on the theme of Hitler.

Bow before you Elsworth Tooey-an overlords, anti-Socialist dirt!

Viva le Clinton!

</left-wing troll>

Re:Why?

[jmcharry]

I don't think that statement is accurate. There is an extensive display on Enigma and the bombes at the NSA museum in Maryland. A large number of bombes were physically in the US, and the US was given the plans so they could build them. A large chunk of one is part of the display.

There are a number of versions of the Enigma machine on display as well, including a pre war commercial version with labeling in English. As I recall, the German military version added another rotor.

Re:Why?

[hughk]

Please remember that the Soviets had little knowledge of the allied success with Enigma and the Lorenz/Siemens telex ciphers. The product (Magic/Ultra) was quite successfully written off to humint and even most customers seemed to believe there was a high ranking source leaking keys/plaintexts.

The DDR definitely continued to use both for some period after the war. The Soviets continued to use methods used in the telex stream ciphers that could be attacked by Collossus. I'm sure that Collossus didn't survicve beyond the fifties but I'm also certain that other specialised equipment was built on the same principles must have survived until the end of the eighties. Whilst this isn't explicitly explained at BP, it seems apparent from the museum.

Re:Why?

[clap_hands]

Yeah. Wikipedia says:

      "After World War II, some fifty bombes were retained at Eastcote, while the rest were destroyed. The surviving bombes were put to work, possibly on Eastern bloc ciphers (Smith, 1998). The official history of the bombe states that "some of these machines were to be stored away but others were required to run new jobs and sixteen machines were kept comparatively busy on menus. It is interesting to note that most of the jobs came up and the operating, checking and other times maintained were faster than the best times during the war periods."

And:

      "Two Colossus computers, along with two replica Tunny machines, were retained, moving to GCHQ's new headquarters at Eastcote in April 1946, and moving again with GCHQ to Cheltenham between 1952 and 1954[3]. One of the Colossi, known as Colossus Blue, was dismantled in 1959; the other in 1960[3]. In their later years, the Colossi were used for training, but before that, there had been attempts to adapt them, with varying success, to other purposes[4]. Jack Good relates how he was the first to use it after the war, persuading the NSA that Colossus could be used to perform a function for which they were planning to build a special purpose machine[3]. Colossus was also used to perform character counts on one-time pad tape to ensure their randomness[3]."

A bombe?!

[Snarfangel]

That's a dangerous animal! Quick, throw it in the trough!

Turing Bombe emulator?

[AceCaseOR]

Has anyone written up an program to emulate the functions of the Turing Bombe (and, for that matter, software to encrypt something in the Enigma cypher?)

Re:Turing Bombe emulator?

[Quiet_Desperation]

ahref=http://homepages.tesco.net/~andycarlson/enig ma/enigma_j.htmlrel=url2html-10809http://homepages .tesco.net/~andycarlson/enigma/enigma_j.html>

There's others. Check the Wikipedia entry

Re:Turing Bombe emulator?

[necro81]

I'm sure that such software exists (by today's standards and with computer programming, it is downright easy).

Actually, building a hardware replica isn't too difficult with some perseverance. Back in college, I took a digital electronics course that entailed a fairly difficult final project. Three people got together and made a device that recreated the enigma. They used EEPROMs instead of turning wheels, a PS/2 keyboard instead of a typewriter, and a few PALs to handle everything else (like mod26 arithmetic). It took them 3-4 tough weeks, but they cranked it out and it (ultimately) worked perfectly.

Re:Turing Bombe emulator?

[mancontr]

...and, for that matter, software to encrypt something in the Enigma cypher

I did, the code isn't very good but i've checked with original messages and it works. It's written in PHP and it's open source: Misterio

Re:Turing Bombe emulator?

[uhlume]

An extremely faithful Enigma simulator: http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/enigmasim. htm

Oh no!

[cold fjord]

Somebody set up us the bombe!

Re:Oh no!

[XenoPhage]

Ugh, I must be quicker about refreshing my slashdot tab... *I* could have been the one with the funny!

Re:Oh no!

[Shadyman]

What you say???

Sommebody set up us the Bombe

[ezeecheez]

Take off every 'zig.

Re:Sommebody set up us the Bombe

[ezeecheez]

Redundant? It was posted at the exact same time as the one above it. Oh well, I knew it was a stupid as hell predictable joke but I posted it anyway. I confess. I do that sometimes.

Enigma-Cracking Bombe

[brunascle]

that's no match for my paradox-absorbing crumple zones

OH GNOSE, MEIN FUHRER

[ronadams]

Somebody set up us the bombe! ...sorry.

Zero Wing oblig...

[Anonymous Coward]

In A.D. 2101
War was beginning.

Captain: What happen?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bombe.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's You !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us.
Cats: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Cats: HA HA HA HA ....
Captain: Take off every 'zig' !!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'zig'.
Captain: For great justice.

Re:Zero Wing oblig...

[Anonymous Coward]

Although the "Ha" appears on the screen four (4) times it is only said three (3) times...just a tidbit that makes AYB classic.

EXFCER

Url

[catbutt]

Sorry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe

Origin of the name

[JohnGrahamCumming]

It's not very well known but the unusual name 'bombe' actual caused the entire hip hop explosion in the US, for which Alan Turing is directly responsible. As well we as the Undecidability problem, Turing machines and the Turing test, Turing was responsible, after a demonstration of the code breaking machine to top UK officials at the MOD received a standing ovation, to have remarked "Truly gentlemen this machine represents the finest British engineering, and is da bombe".

It is unknown when the final e from bombe was dropped.

Re:Origin of the name

[Pandamonium]

Truly gentlemen this machine represents the finest British engineering, and is da bombe

And the crowd chanted: It truly roxors our boxors!

More info -- Wikipedia link

[Anonymous Coward]

More info on Wikipedia. Posting as anon to avoid karma whoring.

Bomba (cryptography)

Not the first electronic computer

[vossman77]

From the headline:

"The replica joins a recreated electronic Colossus -- generally considered the first electronic computer."

Please see this chart before making such claims. It is only the second electronic computer but the first programmable electronic computer.

Re:Not the first electronic computer

[Anonymous Coward]

Piffle and poppycock.

The Z3 is not an electronic computer at all, even the wiki article recognises that.
It contains no electronic devices.

Re:Not the first electronic computer

[Jon Peterson]

Please bear in mind that Wikipedia is not the definitive source of truth in the universe. That fact that person a's opinions differ from person Wikipedia's opinions does not make them de facto incorrect.

Having just returned from a remote part of northern India, I discovered almost everything about the place in Wikipedia is:

a: Plagiarised from the handful of guidebooks that exist
b: At least 15 years out of date - just like the guidebooks!

Wheee...

Bombe, Bomba, Bomby, let's call the whole thing of

[igb]

The Polish desert in question, and Rejewski's machine, is bomba or bomby, I forgot which. It was also consonant with the ticking noise the machine made. The Polish machine performed a different task to the British: to determine the implications of particular sets of indicators, in the original system with double-enciphered message messages. Turing and Welchman named their device the bombe in honour of the bomby (and in rather poor security, too). It performed a different task, but was still at heart an automated Enigma machine, able to step through settings rapidly.

ian

DMCA?

[Gothmolly]

Isn't that sort of think illegal in the US at least? Is that further proof that our laws are stupid?

"Bombe"

[192939495969798999]

I've had the dessert called a "bombe" before, it is approximately the shape of the device that the article shows the lady holding, so bombe may be a more general term for something that size/shape that was adopted for the dessert as well as the machine part.

tick tick tick

[dmccarty]

From the article: The replica goes on general display at Bletchley Park on September 23.

Hopefully they'll do more than just display it. I would love to hear the ticking sound of one running. (Incidentally, that's where the name "bombe" comes from.)

Re:tick tick tick

[hughk]

I had the pleasure of seeing the replica Collossus running with an explanation by Tony Sale, the project leader for the recreation. I heard it running too (there were some relays but it was mostly the tape loop that created the noise).

The recerated design came from engineers notes (illegally retained) and a few photographs.

The phrase 'I am not worthy' comes to mind...

The subject led me to believe...

[Billosaur]

...this was an article about an explosive device capable of cracking Bill Gates' innermost thoughts... but perhaps I was mistaken...

Wasn't Conrad Zuse first?

[Dhrakar]

Actually, the title 'First Electronic Computer' is not as cut-n-dried as that. There is good evidence that the title should really go to the Z3 from Conrad Zuse. Other that Mauchly/Eckert his system is generally considered to be the best contender for first electronic computer.
http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/zuse.html

Re:Wasn't Conrad Zuse first?

[imsabbel]

Werent those bombs non-programmable?
They dont even compete in the eniac vs zuse-2 match...

Re:Wasn't Conrad Zuse first?

[Nursie]

Maybe he means colossus.

The bombes were electromechanical devices used on enigma, colossus was a programmable computer built at bletchley park and used to crack lorentz.

As usual we Brits had it destroyed and then kept the whole project under wraps for decades after the war, losing out on any technological advantage it might have given us. Tommy Flowers, the designer/builder was a worker for the general post office and he built colossus out of parts he borrowed from them. When the war was over he had to give them back, or so the story goes...

Re:Wasn't Conrad Zuse first?

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone's interested, my girlfriend lives in Dollis Park, Finchley (where Tommy Flowers built the Colossus).

The place where he did it is a small brick factory building at the top of her road - ex Post Office and now BT. It's being pulled down as you read this, to put up a development of six flats. Here's a multi-map url - you can see the small block marked 'PO' - http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?client=publ ic&GridE=-0.19831&GridN=51.60260&lon=-0.19831&lat= 51.60260&place=Dollis%20Park%2C%20FINCHLEY%2C%20N3 &db=GB&scale=5000&search_result=Dollis%20Park%2C%2 0FINCHLEY%2C%20N3&lang=&db=GB&keepicon=true

I don't think anyone realises the history of the place. There's no blue plaque. Indeed, there isn't much of anything there at the moment!

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

I was so gonna do that.

Internal evidence that this story is false

[Flying pig]

(1) NO MOD official would ever applaud anything done by British scientists/engineers. And (2) one of AMT's greatest attributes was his willingness to transcend the mathematician/scientist/engineer divide.

The actual approach to technology of the MOD is this:
Ignore British invention for 20 years or so
Buy it when it is produced in the US
Claim that British technology is inadequate and we must always follow the Americans.

And if you think I'm bitter about the Cocks encryption method (RSA), or the entire postwar history of British technology - yes, I am.

Re:Internal evidence that this story is false

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed out stage two:

1) Ignore British invention for 20 years or so
2) GIVE IT TO THE US (usually stuffing the British inventor in the process)
3) Buy it when it is produced in the US
4) Claim that British technology is inadequate and we must always follow the Americans.

Pictures hard to come by

[OakDragon]

Still, I found some more.

To See or not to See

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are in the DC area, you can visit the National Cryptologic Museum, just off the BW parkway in MD. They have a couple of Bombes on display (not working) as well as a working Enigma machine. There are a small number of other exhibits that make it worth your while to stop in and check out.

Re:To See or not to See

[Peyna]

Well, if you have a shovel and a lot of time, supposedly there are also a number of them buried along the banks of the Great Miami River in Dayton.

Quotation

[empaler]

That is an awesome quote.

Not your fault

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>But then again we did something similar to Babage and his difference engine.

Babbage got suprisingly generous funding, but unfortunately he was ahead of his time in another way -- he practiced feature creep. He kept redesigning while the machine was being built, which is part of the reason he needed such generous funding.

xfghb chnbg snhwq

[Skiron]

cnkxh xqjzx apqxk kqxya qxhtr qxngt sdopq zluyz :-)

Re:xfghb chnbg snhwq

[Anonymous Coward]

qnsyx ptnzu dmalr bcwvp clrvy mpxwq ufgwl

All the World War II ifs and maybes

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

No matter if Germany had had adequate COMSEC, no matter if they'd invaded England, no matter if they'd made any of a zillion decisions better: the outcome of the war was sealed when anti-Semitism drove out the nuclear scientists. The war could have been longer and its end even more horrible but the Allies would have won.

The bombe's were built in Dayton

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a good history of the physical machines development.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/search/content/proj ect/enigma/enigma_index.html

Re:The bombe's were built in Dayton

[Peyna]

Another link regarding a recent documentary on the group at Dayton: Dayton Codebreaks.

Text-to-Enigma-to-Text translator

[ArsSineArtificio]

Has anyone written up an program to emulate the functions of the Turing Bombe (and, for that matter, software to encrypt something in the Enigma cypher?)

You mean you want a program where the input and the output are the same?

American bombe bigger than UK bombe

[grant420]

Is it just me, or does it seem somehow appropriate (considering our appetites for things large) that the American version of the bombe was 2.5 tons, while the British bombe weighed in at a mere 1 ton? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe)

Re:American bombe bigger than UK bombe

[mparker762]

It's just you. The british bombe's were used on the 3-rotor enigma but couldn't handle the naval 4-rotor enigma. The american version was a bigger variant (and there were many more of them) to handle the much more difficult naval variant.

Re:American bombe bigger than UK bombe

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it does seem appropriate. The British did the hard work of sorting out how to do it, then the Americans came along, added a wheel, and claimed they thought the whole thing up themselves.

See the Wikki for depth charges as another good example.

Touring?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Colossus was The Forbin Project.

Bombe

[anfi]

Bombe

A. T.

[Nom du Keyboard]

Alan Turing, the man who felt a computer intelligence could have a soul if God wished it. And who died Snow White style, via a poisoned apple at far too young an age. RIP.

A true shame is the way Bletchley Park is treated

[fantomas]

A true shame is the way the Bletchley Park Museum is treated by the UK government and heritage authorities - they got turned down from national heritage funding and the whole place is operating on a shoe string. There are great volunteers (some of whom worked there in the war) who will take you on guided tours. It's really an amazing place to visit. Go there!

But they need financial help to keep the place running. Parts of the place really need financial investment - the Huts where the code breaking happened are barely standing. They've had to sell off some of the land around the house to developers (who are building a housing estate) to pay for the upkeep. Some of the volunteers were going round interviewing people who'd worked there during the war, they were so short of money that once they'd transcribed the interviews, they'd tape over the recordings and use the same tape again in the next interview to save money on buying new audio tapes.

If you think the work carried out at Bletchley Park during the war was valuable, or fascinating, contribute to keeping the place running as a museum. Visit the place! Buy some cool stuff from the shop! send them a donation! Please.

A beowulf cluster of these...

[patio11]

... would have as much computing power as my wristwatch, give or take.

Machines? We don't need no steenkin' machines

[d2ksla]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_Beurling:

Arne Carl-August Beurling (February 3, 1905 - November 20, 1986) was a mathematician and professor of mathematics at Uppsala University (1937-1954) and later at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, USA.

In 1940 he single-handedly deciphered and reverse-engineered an early version of the Geheimfernschreiber (one of the "Fish cyphers") used by Nazi Germany, and created a device that enabled Sweden to decipher German teleprinter traffic passing through Sweden from Norway on a cable. In this way, Swedish authorities knew about Operation Barbarossa before it occurred. This became the foundation for the Swedish Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA). (The cypher in the Geheimfernschreiber is generally considered to be more complex than the cypher used in the Enigma machines.)

Generally considered the first?

[kamapuaa]

I had thought ENIAC was the first computer (generally considered by whom?), and from looking at the Wikipedia article, it seems the Colossus wasn't actually a computer:

Colossus was the first of the electronic digital machines to feature limited programmability. However, it was not a fully general purpose computer, not being Turing-complete, even though Alan Turing on whose research this definition was based, worked at Bletchley Park where Colossus was put into operation. It was not then realized that Turing-completeness was significant; most of the other pioneering modern computing machines were not either (e.g. the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, the Harvard Mark I electro-mechanical relay machine, the Bell Labs relay machines (by George Stibitz et al), Konrad Zuse's first two designs, and so on). The notion of a computer as a general purpose machine, and not simply a massive calculator devoted to solving difficult but single-minded problems, did not become prominent until a few years later.

Re:Generally considered the first?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Eniac is considered the first computer by Americans, who have a a unique and original view of history which is not shared by the rest of the world.

Wikkipedia's view of history is that of whoever was the last person to update the article. If you want, I will alter it for you?

The reason Turing is considered so great is not that he was involved in the development of computers - this was a sideshow to him. He was a mathematician who did the first non-philosophical work on what it means to think, and whether it is possible to create an artificial intelligence. He found that it was, and that as a corollary we are all 'artificial intelligences'. It was this finding, contradicting the fundamental tenets of all religions (which argue that our 'soul' is a divine object) which probably lay behind the decision to take his own life.

Our software engineering is not yet up to it (our hardware is probably capable, or will be shortly), but when it is, the first thinking systems will derive straight from his work.

This is in marked contrast to work such as that at the Dayton centre, which was essentially pedestrian application of known principles. If you wish to follow the American approach of idolising the people who made money out of computing development, you could do worse than look at Jo Lyons, a restaurant entrepeneur in England, who developed the very first commercial computer, the LEO 1.

Re:Generally considered the first?

[kamapuaa]

I guess you don't like America, or maybe you really like England, or something? Either way, if it's not Turing complete, it's not a computer. That's not a matter of national pride, that's just how computers are defined.

And why would the Colossus be the first computer, and not the Z3?

Somebody set us up the bombe.

[Dr. Derail]

Had to be said.

Picturs from Bletchley, June 2006

[jamesbromberger]

I visited in July this year with GLUGG. Great day out. Had a fly-past too.

Re:A true shame is the way Bletchley Park is treat

[Des Herriott]

Amen. The place deserves a lot more support than it currently gets, given its historical significance.

On the other, it currently has a lot of authenticity and a certain shabby charm - I'd really hate to see it turned into some kind of glossy ultra-modern WWII theme park.

Re:A true shame is the way Bletchley Park is treat

[anaplasmosis]

I couldn't agree more. I went there recently (to donate some stuff to the Computer Museum) and driving onto the site makes little cold feet walk up and down one's spine - Station X! The actual place! Alan Turing Was Here. And yet, the Government and the bozos at the Heritage Lottery Fund won't hand over a bean, despite pissing away billions on pointless crap like the Millenium Dome (not to mention sucking up to George Bush and pretending we still have an Empire to send a gunboat to.) It makes me despair of this bloody country.

Hofstadter is smarter than you think!

[ioliver]

If you are a geek, read Godel Escher Bach, and The Mind's I. And if you really want to tackle something, try Metamagical Themas.

Metamagical Themas is just Gödel, Escher, Bach read backwards skipping every other word, so you didn't need to go and buy it!

Ian

Re:Hofstadter is smarter than you think!

[gosand]

Metamagical Themas is just Gödel, Escher, Bach read backwards skipping every other word, so you didn't need to go and buy it!

Paradoxically, it is about twice as long! :)

meanwhile ibm helped the germans

[cheekyboy]

And ibm sold some cool hollarinth machines etc.. to the Germans to gather all the statistics/census data to find all the jews and 5% jews/gays and steal
their wealth.

More pictures

[Tom7]

Here are some high-res pictures of a non-working Bombe rebuild from Bletchley last year:

http://gallery.spacebar.org/f/a/photo/viewpic/1/52 2/1/
http://gallery.spacebar.org/f/a/photo/viewpic/1/52 3/1/
http://pictures.spacebar.org/f/a/photo/viewpic/2/4 91/1/

Re:The bombes were built in Dayton

[Animats]

The early bombes were built by The British Tabulating Machine Company. The later, improved version (with a printer) was built by NCR in Dayton. The initial British Tabulating Machine version just slowed and stopped after a hit, and someone had to crank the thing backwards to the hit point, record the settings, and restart, since many hits were false alarms. The improved version would stop, reverse to the hit point, print the stop info, and restart.

Visit Bletchley Park if you're in London. It's a short train trip, it's near the railroad station, and there's a tour. But go on a weekend, or you're liable to get someone who's an expert on British manor house architecture and will focus on that.