
The Enigma Machine: How Alan Turing Helped Break the Unbreakable Nazi Code - narad
http://www.openculture.com/2013/01/the_enigma_machine_how_alan_turing_helped_break_the_unbreakable_nazi_code_.html
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Tloewald
Nice to see that the article mentions the Polish Bombe upon which Turing's
work was based. Even so, by now Turing's accomplishments are hardly unknown,
and the work of the Poles probably deserves more attention (getting the Bombe
from Poland to England as Poland fell to the allied Nazis and Soviets would
probably make a good story too.

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SeanDav
I have always been a huge fan of Alan Turing and could not respect him more,
but keep in mind that he was part of a team. The story of Enigma is really a
story about a whole spectrum of people, many of whom also played very
significant roles and don't get the recognition they deserve.

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gambiting
Especially Polish scientists who broke the Enigma first,and when the war was
imminent gave their knowledge to the British team, without which it would be
impossible to crack the Enigma completely. It annoys me that they are so
rarely mentioned.

<http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/poles/poles.htm>

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Tloewald
The linked article at least mentions the Polish Bombe.

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kamaal
When it comes to breaking the Enigma Machine, the guy who actually did is a
polish mathematician named Marian Rejewski.

All credits to Alan Turing. But in all fairness its Marian Rejewski who did
it.

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InclinedPlane
Neither Rejewski nor Turing broke Enigma alone, to give either complete credit
without crediting the other is a gross and false simplification. On the whole
Turing's work was more significant and ultimately more fruitful but both
deserve to be mentioned whenever the subject of breaking Enigma comes up,
though others such as Henryk Zygalski and Dilly Knox probably deserve a bit of
a mention too.

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cs702
For those interested in learning more, Simon Singh's "The Code Book: The
Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography"[1] has a great
chapter explaining in detail the creative breakthroughs that allowed Turing to
break the Enigma machine when it was stumping pretty much everyone else at
Bletchley Park.

\--

[1] <http://www.amazon.com/Code-Book/dp/0385495323>

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mittermayr
This guy did a comprehensive job at digesting the material available, had a
professional speaker do the audio book, ebook and so forth and gives it all
away for free:

<http://www.bletchleypark.at>

the audio book is really cool and can be completed in one or two car rides
home, loved the compact format. wish more folks would make these little
historical snippets (other than wikipedia).

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shabble
I'm slightly confused by his description of:

"Oh, but it’s clever, you see, because the Enigma machine [...] translates
ordinary messages into code through an ingenious method by which _no letter in
the code ever repeats_ , making it almost impossible to decode in the ordinary
ways."

Since it used a standard alphabet of symbols, and messages >26 chars exist,
that statement is wrong. I presume he actually means that plaintext symbols
will not code consistently to the same ciphertext symbols (i.e. not a simple
substitution cipher), due to the rotation of the rotors.

But it's also not entirely far from another very interesting property (and one
which significantly aided in the breaking of the code), by which no plaintext
symbol can ever map to itself (due to the reflector design)

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dchris
hi,

chris here (i'm the author). you're right, i meant the repetition of the same
rotor setting (which is responsible for enciphering the plaintext).

can you tell me which paragraph/sentence was confusing? I'm always open for
improvement (especially as I'm not a native english speaker and some
formulations are not perfect).

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haar
The first half of our initial Haskell module covered breaking the enigma
machine, it was great fun and the lecturers made sure to give the back story
in detail covering both the british and polish efforts (probably in an attempt
to make the module appear 'cooler'). It was a great module and I have the
upmost respect for Turing and the unsung Polish efforts made in breaking it.

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yock
Numberphile did two episodes on the Enigma machine, with some practical
demonstration and a basic discussion of the mathematics involved.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2_Q9FoD-
oQ&feature=share...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2_Q9FoD-
oQ&feature=share&list=UUoxcjq-8xIDTYp3uz647V5A)

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JshWright
You mean the two videos embedded in TFA?

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chrisbennet
Speaking of those who didn't get credit...

I couldn't find it during my lunch break, but I saw a documentary about
another code breaker/breaking team at Blechley Park during the same period who
worked on another German code (more secret than the Enigma that Turning worked
on). One of the fellows made the first electronic computer as I recall. It was
all kept secret and the code breaker unheralded until just recently.

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xwowsersx
I don't understand how the combinations of the 26 letters of the alphabet
minus the 6 we don't care about (bc we only want 10 pairs) becomes 26!/6!

Why does the division make sense here?

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hanula
More facts: <http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/bombe/index.htm>

