Comments on: Back To The Beginning

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:45:45 +0000

You don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been, as someone said. It’s difficult to appreciate what an accomplishment the code breaking was until you see it in action.

Jams, without the intelligence you don’t know what’s important and what isn’t and there’s an awful lot of ocean to search if you’re looking for subs. Colossus and radar were crucial to saving the British Isles from invasion, just as the RAF and Royal Navy took the battle to the enemy.

By: jams o donnell

jams o donnell — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:20:06 +0000

Wow I’d missed that news item. I’m so pleased to see that it is in action again. Bletchley Park was certainly one of Britain’s most important contributions to WWII. Without Colossus and the bombes to decrypt german communication Britain could well have been brought to its knees by U-boats. It is often said that Station X shortened the war by two years. I would not cast much doubt on that assessment.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 07:17:42 +0000

Tatjana van Vark.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 07:11:43 +0000

What fun. You don’t need it, but for other nonspecialist readers, I recommend the book Code Breaking by Rudolf Kippenhahn, translated from the German, published in English in 1999. (Oops… I just discovered a worm in my copy. I don’t mean a piece of malware; I mean a bookworm. Damn!)

There’s also a Dutch woman who builds, among many other marvelous devices, modern versions of old crypto equipment. I’ll post her name when I find it.