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Enigma-Cracking Bombe Recreated

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the we-shall-never-surrender dept.

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."

1 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Marian Rejewski by Mahy · · Score: 5, Informative

    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