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BT funds UK Crypto Heritage Park
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.
"
Babbage had the ideas, but not the technology to create his ideas... Victorian metallurgy wasn't quite up to the job - and he didn't have the money, either.
(see Gibson & Sterling's excellent "The Difference Engine" for alternate reality)
If someone built a Babbage engine using nanotech it would be a cool tech-demo though...
Well, I wonder if Neal Stephenson's recent book had anything to do with this...
-Jared Maguire
jared@ccs.neu.edu
jmaguire@analogic.com
From what I understand, the analytical engine required more precise machining than could do at the time, and when it was able to be built it was cheaper to use electronics.
Although I think it would be cool if they built it and tried to see if Lady Ada Lovelace's programs work on it.
No no no no no no no no no!
Apologies in advance for rant, bit of a pet subject (bet you couldn't guess....)
Despite the widely held misconception, Colossus was never used to crack Enigma (not even the four rotor naval Enigma introduced in 1942).
Enigma was first cracked in the early 1930's by the Poles (mainly Rejewski), who also developed the first bombe. Turing was later instramental in the development of the British bombes.
As well as Enigma, the Germans had higher level codes, using two teletype based machines (the Schutzstaffel and Geheimscreiber) which were several orders of magnitude more complex than the Enigmas. These (known in Bletchley collectively as "Fish") were first cracked by a machine called Robinson (after Heath Robinson), which was really a technology demonstrator, and relied on keeping two paper tapes synchronised using a sprocket drive, which was incredibly unreliable. Colossus electronically generated the character stream from one of the tapes, allowing the other to be read optically at speeds of up to 30mph.
The whole of Bletchley was shrouded in secrecy until about 1974, when the Enigma cracking was revealed. Colossus (or the Colossi) remained classified for another fifteen years or so, but they've now built a replica at Bletchley based on a couple of old photos, and the memory of Tommy Flowers (original designer).
Well worth a trip, if you're every near Milton Keynes....
Anyway, I could go on (and on).... damnably interesting subject...
a bit like the fact that hollywood is doing a film about the capturing of the enigma, and changed the story from a british submarine to an AMERICAN submarine ( even though this happened before the US entered the war!!).
Nah, the Enigma cracking was blown in 1974 in a book called "The Ultra Secret" IIRC, though given the number of people working at Bletchley it's pretty surprising it lasted that long.
Churchill probably was hoping the Russians would take over some of the German crypto systems, but they knew all about Bletchley as they had a spy (Carnicross) there, who gave them some good stuff on Kursk amongst other things.
I went there in February, and it is truly a Geek Mecca. To build public support, they opened up the place to anyone with a collection who wanted museum space. There's a Ham Radio museum (and station), the Computer Conservation Society (all kinds of old gear), as well as tons of Crypto. You should plan to spend a day. (As in, we were there for three hours and didn't get to the "Hall of Cryptography".)
This is terrific news. Now that Bletchley is reasonable secure, we can think about the Turing statue.
If you can, go.
Brilliant book that; "The Difference Engine" - love the 'line streamed' gurneys :)
john@snowdon36.freeserve.co.uk
Paranoid bollocks. "Enigma" was totally outdated and of academic interest only in the period to which you refer. If the Brit's *did* read Irish diplomatic correspondence, you can bet they weren't the only ones AND Dublin should have bothered to get something more private! Hell, did you read the recent articles on SIGINT to which the Aussie government confessed? Did you understand the scale on which it's practised? Interception of encrypted correspondance is as old as cryptography itself. Using old and known cryptography is not smart. Using new and unknown cryptography merely buys you a little time.
They way I learned(remember) it in school...and it could be very wrong:
The computer at Bletchley Park was the first "programmable electronic" computer.
The ENIAC was the first computer that used some sort of "transistor" and was therefore the first "digital computer".
Basically, from what i remember the one at Bletchley was not digital.
>(Were they criminals, was their family ashamed >of them? Did the aristocrats have a bad >reputation as cruel landowners? Or were they, >like the majority, merely illiterate and unable >to spell their name? Etc.).
Er, most of the name changes at places like Ellis Island came not from illiterate immigrants, but immigration officers who could not/did not want to understand the original family names. They assigned new ones on the spot that they could spell.
So far I've read about the Enigma and Yellow schemes used by Germany and Japan. I've never read about what schemes the Allies used in WW2.
What type of codes did we use?
Last months (in the uk anyway, the one on OO pp110 "Paradigms Past") DDJ
has a small article which debunks that idea,
a group of expert in victorian metallugy (sp?) led by Doran Swade
built a difference engine using techiniques and materials availabel at the time
. It would seem that Babbages failures where in his own personality,
he had a habit of offending the very people that funded him
amd basicaally he ran out of money, and people to borrow money from.
www.ddj.com might have the article online.
In many cases the United States didn't use codes at all. Instead, it recruited every Navaho Indian it could get its hands on and used them as radiomen. They would translate messages into their native language. I don't think the Axis ever figured out what was going on. In fact, this may be the only case where security through obscurity actually worked.
In many cases the United States didn't use codes at all. Instead, it recruited every Navaho Indian it could get its hands on and used them as radiomen. They would simply translate messages into their native language and send them. I don't think the Axis ever figured out what was going on. In fact, this may be the only case where security through obscurity actually worked.
Wasn't the sub a German sub? The ship was that captured it was the HMS Bulldog, which was escorting a convoy from Canada to England.
I finished it a few days ago. Man, it was a great read, but I feel like I need to read it again. Fortunately it's long enough to where you could just start at page 1 again and feel like you're reading a new book (coz you've forgotten the beginning by the time you get to the end).
Is Cryptonomicon a Strange Loop?
:)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Posted by _DogShu_:
I thought ENIAC was the first electronic programmable computer. That's what they told me in my CompSci classes.
Strange then that not long after that he was convicted of being a homosexual and killed himself after being forced to take oestrogen (the female sex hormone) by the government.
--
--
--
I think that you are thinking of Konrad Zuse. He built an electromechnical (relays) binary computer. (Several others later)
r y/KonradZuse.html
;-) ), C. Babbage:
s /computing.html
The German military saw no use for it, however...
The Manachester "Baby" was the first stored program computer (it used CRTs for memory!). ENIAC was programmed by wiring. EDSAC used a mercury delay line for memory (bits were stored as ultrasonic pulses which travelled down a trough of Hg).
The Web is very rich in historical details, if you want to search.
On Zuse:
http://www.wellesley.edu/CS/courses/CS110/Histo
On the analytical engine (The FIRST computer
http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/
General computer museum:
http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/archive/other/museum
"Bletch" or "Blatch" is an old Saxon word meaning "bleach", as in to remove colour, to wash clean or to colour white.
"Ley", "Lee" or "Lay" means a field or a clearing in a forest. Remember, in Saxon times, most of Europe was one huge forest so most fields were also clearings! No prizes for guessing what my surname (Oakley) means, then.
Thus "Bletchley" means the field where people washed their clothes. Maybe one of your ancestors lived near such a field, or was a washerman there, or owned a dark ages launderette business!
The Bletchley family have quite an aristocratic heritage in England, which includes residence at Bletchley Park (he says quickly getting back on topic).
If you ancestors changed their name from Bletchley to something else on arrival in the USA, it is possible they were trying to dissasociate themselves with the aristocratic branch of the family (Were they criminals, was their family ashamed of them? Did the aristocrats have a bad reputation as cruel landowners? Or were they, like the majority, merely illiterate and unable to spell their name? Etc.). You can find out more from virtually any geneology site (there are millions) and there are several famous Bletchleys in the history books.
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Okay, the reason I put the word "allegedly" into my story quote is because I expected there to be some considerable disagreement about which was the "first" computer. Particularly since Germany, France, the UK and the USA all claim this honour (plus a few others I expect).
The problem is: what is a computer? Do you mean a calculator? So does an abacus count? Something that runs a program? So does a weaving loom count? Something electronic that runs a program? So does a washing machine count? Something digital? Something that has a modifyable program? Something that stores its program in the same way as its data?
As you can see, there are many definitions of "computer". Stop bickering!
And to add to that, early computers were often an international effort. Certianly Bletchley Park relied heavily on US involvement towards the end of the war.
That doesn't detract from the fact that Bletchley Park was a major contributor to both cryptography and modern computing.
Anyway, here's a few more British historical computing links for those who like nostaligia. If anyone would like to add some links to sites about other historical computers- of any nation- I'd be most interested.
Colossus I
The LEO - Lyons Electric Office (my dad worked on this)
The WITCH (my dad worked on this, too!)
The Baby
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Bletchley is the name of a town, that Bletchley park is in. The town is now part of the new city of Milton Keynes (where I live). If you've got a UK map handy, that's supposedly central in the UK - about halfway between London and Birmingham...
:)
I don't know where the name of the town comes from, sorry...
Do you know what the really sad thing is? I have lived in this area for nearly 10 years now, and Bletchley Park has an open day at least once a month - and I have never been there... I feel so guilty
On the plus side, I have contributed cash to the Alan Turing memorial fund, which is building a statue of the great man himself...
Regards,
Denny
Police State UK - news and
Although I don't know this for sure - most old English country mansions like Bletchley were named after the family who first built them.
:(
You can search the UK phone directory for 'bletchley' here, but you'll need to do it region by region.
...now when's someone gonna design a Quake "Bletchley Park" Deathmatch level? ;-)
they tryed to sell it but there where lots of nice trees that they could not cut down so had to give it over to the people
and yes it was the first computer and the US did not help but where helped by it
the reason why histroy books are wrong is that it was all so very hush hush
everything was destroyed
hmmm apples are nice
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
Fantastic news! Last week there was a lot of speculation in the British media that BillG was going to 'save' it by funding some restoration and building an MS 'campus' on some of the land. That would have been a real insult to the achievements of Bletchley Park and the role of military intelligence in the defeat of the Axis.
Where did the recreation end up. I know the only part left from the original was (maby still is) in the lobby of the Physics building at Iowa State university.
This is really cool. Funny thing is, if this were to happen in the US, the whole place would be bulldozed under and replaced with the Bletchley Memorial Shopping Center.
Blech. Signatures.
Something kind of petty that I found interesting was that I now have some images to go with what I read in Cryptonomicon.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Speaking of the first stored-program computer, turns out I have a connection to it I didn't know about. It turns out that both Tom Kilburn and Freddie Williams, who built the Mark I, worked (and first met) at TRE, the Telecommunications Research Establishment (actually, they did radar research) in Malvern. Which happens to be where my parents worked (and first met) during the same period, my dad also doing radar research.
:-)
I guess I come from a long line of nerds
-- Alastair
Does anyone know where the word Bletchley comes from in Bletchley park? It is very similar to my last name, and my ancestors came from England about 250 years ago and changed our name (to "Blachly"). Even now there are less than 400 Blachlys in the United States (according to the Census beurau(sp)), and looking through historical records (you know those giant books that list every last name in the world supposedly, and tell its history) "Blachly" isn't in there. I think my surname was at one time "Blachleigh" "Blatchley" or "Bletchley" and I'm attempting (not very successfully, I am busy with college :) to investigate the history.
Thanks if anyone happens to know anything.
The Colossus was designed by Tommy Flowers (who died late last year) from the Post Office Research Department. This department is now British Telecom Research Labs based in Ipswich. :) ) at BT Labs) hear this first on /. ???
So why do I (working ( allegedly
Oh well. Hooray for us anyway!
The BBC have a write up that claims Ian Flemming was there for a time as well.
Where you stand depends on where you sit...
I visited there earlier at the instigation of my Computer Science teacher and found it very interesting. Perhaps because I also study history. Shortly afterwards, one of the codebreakers actually came to my college to give a talk.
.uk internet addict I naturally hate BT for their per/minute billing which leads to horrendous phone bills.
;)
So, I very pleased to here it will be "saved".
I am less pleased that it is BT, since as a
You may remember www.telecom.eu.org, www.unmetered.org.uk and other campaigns for unmetered calls
>Funny thing is, if this were to happen in the US, the whole place would be bulldozed under
:)
:)
:)
>and replaced with the Bletchley Memorial Shopping Center
Or only US citizens would be allowed full access, other people would only be allowed access to 56 acres of the ground, and people from Iraq would be refused entry.
Seriously, I've been to Bletchley Park, and it's a interesting sight for those that are interested in crypo, or computers in general (They had a computer archive room when I was there, everything from 8" floppys, shells of PDP, ah memories
They also had a mockup of the original collusus, and thankfully they also had a lot of praise for the people that worked there, and didn't just say, "the computer did it". The sense of history was immense, seeing the actual rooms where the cracking was done, was awesome.
Although, my favourite part of the time I was there was when they had a flyover from a bomber, and a hurricane at about 200 ft - very impressive!
--
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
The Colossus WAS the first single-purpose electronic computer built in Britain, 1943. ENIAC however was the first fully functioning machine to use binary. Other claimants include the German Z-3, built be Konrad Zuse in 1941.
The work undertaken at Bletchely Park was integral to the timely end of WWII. Code name was Ultra. The main task was to simulate a captured German Enigma machine by cracking the Enigma code which Germany transmitted in apparent secrecy thoughout h te war. Enigma had been patented in WW1 to encipher and decipher messages, and was used in civilian life in the interwar years. The Colossus Project entailed highly classified work whose scale and implications were not revealed until thirty years after the war. It was an enormous undertaking, commanding the attentions of a large number of mathematicians, linguists, as well as whole troops of technicians.
In many ways the tribute is a double banger in that it memorialises not just the birth of the application of computers in industrialised society, but also our freedom.
Yippee!
BLAMMO shaken not stirred
The NSA Crypto Museum and memorial park at Ft. George Meade, MD, USA?
BTW, they have really kewell NSA shirts and stuff at the gift shop.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
That would have been stupid, too. If the British had seized codebooks, one-time pads and a working Enigma machine, the Germans would have switched the codes in no time flat.
It was much better to break Enigma and never tell the Germans about it, which is what they did.
A more Bond-esque plot would have been to screw Hitler's wife. :)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
By the way, I found this nifty link on Bletchley Park's site. It's a Java simulation of the Enigma machine (the rotor cipher scheme used by Germans in WW2.) It's really cool and educative.
http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rus sell/classes/enigma/
I think I'm gonna devote some time to this... Have a friend encipher a few messages, then try a few modern attacks. It's nice to see how far we've come in crypto since WW2. Though I bet Enigma is still a pain to break on your own.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Yep, a German sub, U-110. Forthcoming film is called U-110, and changes the ship from Bulldog to some American frigate.
I'll put money on the film making a really big deal of the machine itself, which was largely irrelevant by that time, and entirely ignoring the codebooks, which were the real prize for the cryptographers.
-- Unix is the answer, but only if you phrase the question very carefully.
Fleming was indeed there; he came up with a plan to grab Enigma codebooks that would have done Bond proud.
The idea was to use a captured German bomber, crewed by German speaking British special forces, which would crash into the channel after sending a distress call. When a rescue boat (which had an Enigma and codebooks on board) arrived, the 'bomber crew' would overpower the crew, and sail back to Blighty.
I believe it even got so far as having a crew ready to go, but unsatisfactory weather conditions prevented the plan being used.
--
-- Unix is the answer, but only if you phrase the question very carefully.
One of the main points of the Enigma was that it didn't matter if the enemy had the exact machine if they didn't have the settings (which was fortunate for them, what with the British having working Enigma analogues from the Poles before the war).
As for the codebooks (or lists of settings), if the Germans were aware they'd been captured, then they would have changed them. As it was, settings were recovered from a number of sources, a favourite being weather ships. As long as the Germans believed the ships were sunk rather than captured, the codes wouldn't change.
There were a few incidents which dropped really heavy hints that Enigma had been cracked. The most notable was when all the supply ships for the Bismarck were sunk (accidentally; knowing that to sink all of them would look suspicious the Admiralty didn't target two of the ships, but they were coincidentally found and sunk anyway). Then, and every other time, the Germans refused to believe that Enigma could be cracked, and came up with other explanations.
True, a more Bond-esque plot would have been to parachute an agent into Berlin to get captured and left to be killed in a particularly imaginative way, only to be rescued at the last minute by Eva Braun who'd fallen hopelessly in love with him. Maybe Fleming was just working up to that...
--
-- Unix is the answer, but only if you phrase the question very carefully.
The Allies used various codes; many of them were still based on fairly traditional codebooks, and the Germans (B-dienst?) had considerable success against them.
The Allies also had a machine code very similar to Enigma called TypeX (so similar that TypeX machines could be converted to be used as Enigma analogues). One of the main differences between the machines was that the TypeX printed decoded messages on strips of paper, whereas the Enigma only had an alphabet on which each letter would light up as it decoded.
--
-- Unix is the answer, but only if you phrase the question very carefully.
Big difference between the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine. The Difference Engine was possible (and, IIRC, a small scale one was produced in Babbages lifetime). The Analytical Engine was vastly more complex; Babbage kept having to design the tools to produce the parts he wanted. Babbage didn't help himself by periodically coming up with new ideas which rendered all his previous work obsolete, and effectively bankrupted himself.
--
-- Unix is the answer, but only if you phrase the question very carefully.