Re:WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigm...
by Apocryphon on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @05:13PM
(#18070518)
Now that would make a great movie- or a mini-series.
Re:WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigm...
by munin on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @05:22PM
(#18070603)
If society celebrated math and science, there is a huge cast of heroes to draw from that period to tell an amazing range of stranger-than-fiction true stories. When you read the real story, Cryptonomicon seems comically small minded in comparison.
Rejewski was aided by a French spy, though. It's not clear how far he would have gone without that. It's neat to try and play this game of "who was first" but I think ultimately you have to give credit to the team: it was Poland, England, and France, and they each had some contribution in the early days of Enigma. However, critical to note, this work had been going on before Turing got involved with GC&CS. The alliance began around 1931, and Turing got involved with GC&CS in 1938.
The entire signals problem was also not constrained at all to Enigma. Turing worked extensively on that problem, but there were other cipher systems, like Tunny, that Turing had a much more limited role in, which was mostly a crypotanalysis result from Tiltman (the "1+2 break") and engineering work by Flowers, to create an almost-entirely-electronic vacuum tube computer (which he personally funded because Bletchely thought it was impossible).