Breaking the Code: How Alan Turing's Bombe Machine Helped Win World War II

Alan Turing's work during World War II was instrumental in cracking the Enigma code used by the German military. The Enigma code was a complex cipher system that changed every day, making it extremely difficult to decipher. Turing's Bombe machine was a crucial tool in decrypting the code.

[robotrocket]

For the record, the Poles cracked it first, but the Germans updated it, making their work redundant.

[pdwmr]

some facts: On 5 August 2014 the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) honored Rejewski, Różycki, and Zygalski with its prestigious Milestone Award, which recognizes achievements that have changed the world. The uniqueness of the device lay in both the concept of mechanical cipher-breaking and the exceptional mathematical ideas that Polish cryptanalysts employed to crack the supposedly unbreakable encryption mechanism.
July 2005 Rejewski's daughter, Janina Sylwestrzak, received on his behalf the War Medal 1939–1945 from the British Chief of the Defence Staff. On 1 August 2012 Marian Rejewski posthumously received the Knowlton Award of the U.S. Military Intelligence Corps Association; his daughter Janina accepted the award at his home town, Bydgoszcz, on 4 September 2012. Rejewski had been nominated for the Award by NATO Allied Command

[ryneagheilim]

The Bombe Codebreaker thing is basically Google Translate during WWII

[pawelkania]

the poles cracked it first and his name was not Marion Rijewski....it was Marian Rejewski

[Daniel-OConnell]

The bombe machine was in no way related to computing and is an automated "brute force" method of testing various "cribs" to determine Enigma wheel and plugboard settings.
It is widely confused with the "Collosus" built by Tommy Flowers and engineers from the Post Office research establishment at Dollis Hill London. Collosus was used to crack the German High Command teletype cipher and was indeed a basic computer that had many world firsts, including the "shift register". It did not contribute to the development of early computers as the Collosus machines and drawings were destroyed at the end of WW2 and it's existence was a well kept secret until the late 1970's. Computers developed independently of any work done at Bletchley.

[MGoudsmits]

the machine was not called the bomb. That name was for the Czech device prior to this one as it made ticking noise

[Jim-tvtk]

Did you know that the computer built to decipher codes was a computer built to decipher codes?

[RKostek]

First machine was invented by Rejewski 1938, see

[livingintongues]

Computers are not proving to be a good thing..