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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."
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.
(It's never too late to join the Renaissance)
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?".
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.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
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.
Pining for the fjords
>>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!!
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.
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