The Great British Bombe
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
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The Great British Bombe
The Torygraph: Bletchley hums again to the Turing Bombe
By Ben Fenton
The last time that the rattle of the Turing Bombe was heard, it was the greatest secret of the British Empire. With a rumble that turned into a roar, a sound not heard at Bletchley Park for more than half a century, the machine that was at the heart of Britain's wartime code-breaking triumph began to work again.
The operation of the bombe was likened by the men and, mostly, women who worked on it to a vast collection of knitting needles, but its sound was also the first hint of the computerised world in which we now live. Yesterday, a fully-functioning recreation of the bombe was switched on for the first time, by re-enactors in period dress, bringing back to life the great-great uncle of the PC.
The bombe was the key to cracking the German code known as Enigma, which Hitler's regime believed unbreakable, and in doing so it helped to win the Battle of Britain in 1940 and the Battle of the Atlantic in 1942-43. Developed by the mathematicians Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman, the first bombe was built by the British Tabulating Machine Company in Letchworth, Herts. The first prototype was delivered to Bletchley, the secret code-breaking headquarters outside Milton Keynes, in March 1940, but it was not truly successful at cracking Enigma until a second version came into use about six months later.
All 200 of the bombes built for Bletchley were destroyed after the war, so cloaked in secrecy was the project. So when John Harper, the leader of a team of engineers and mathematicians, decided that it was of great historical importance to have a working bombe available to the public for inspection, all he had to work with were blueprints from GCHQ – the modern equivalent of Bletchley – a few aged photographs and the memories of some elderly code-breakers. But after 10 years, their success was finally and loudly advertised across the old headquarters yesterday.
The rebuilding project involved making almost everything involved from scratch and the engineers estimated that they had used 10 miles of wire alone in constructing the complex machinery. Simon Greenish, the director of Bletchley Park Trust, said the reconstruction was an "astonishing achievement". He said: "What was done at Bletchley has affected all our lives in one way or another because the Second World War would not have ended when it did if it wasn't for Bletchley."
Frank Carter, one of the mathematicians involved, said: "Without Bletchley the war could have lasted another two years. That would have meant atomic weapons in Europe, more and more devastating weapons and many, many more deaths. That's why we believed it was necessary to have this machine available for schoolchildren, and adults, to see exactly what the contribution of this remarkable place was like."
The bombe worked not as a proto-computer – that was the role played by the later machine Colossus, also developed at Bletchley – but as an electro-mechanical machine that tried out all the possible combinations in which the German encoding machine Enigma could be set. It did so at a speed which meant that the Bletchley team could read messages from German military and naval commanders, who assumed that Enigma was unbreakable, within nine hours.
Ruth Bourne, 80, a Bletchley guide now, first arrived as a worker in 1944. "It was a very humdrum existence," she said. "All we knew then was that we were German code-breaking, end of story."
The project will open to the public on Sept 23.
Former bombe operator Jean Valentine is reunited with a restored, fully-functioning machine at Bletchley Park and [inset] during the war.
By Ben Fenton
The last time that the rattle of the Turing Bombe was heard, it was the greatest secret of the British Empire. With a rumble that turned into a roar, a sound not heard at Bletchley Park for more than half a century, the machine that was at the heart of Britain's wartime code-breaking triumph began to work again.
The operation of the bombe was likened by the men and, mostly, women who worked on it to a vast collection of knitting needles, but its sound was also the first hint of the computerised world in which we now live. Yesterday, a fully-functioning recreation of the bombe was switched on for the first time, by re-enactors in period dress, bringing back to life the great-great uncle of the PC.
The bombe was the key to cracking the German code known as Enigma, which Hitler's regime believed unbreakable, and in doing so it helped to win the Battle of Britain in 1940 and the Battle of the Atlantic in 1942-43. Developed by the mathematicians Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman, the first bombe was built by the British Tabulating Machine Company in Letchworth, Herts. The first prototype was delivered to Bletchley, the secret code-breaking headquarters outside Milton Keynes, in March 1940, but it was not truly successful at cracking Enigma until a second version came into use about six months later.
All 200 of the bombes built for Bletchley were destroyed after the war, so cloaked in secrecy was the project. So when John Harper, the leader of a team of engineers and mathematicians, decided that it was of great historical importance to have a working bombe available to the public for inspection, all he had to work with were blueprints from GCHQ – the modern equivalent of Bletchley – a few aged photographs and the memories of some elderly code-breakers. But after 10 years, their success was finally and loudly advertised across the old headquarters yesterday.
The rebuilding project involved making almost everything involved from scratch and the engineers estimated that they had used 10 miles of wire alone in constructing the complex machinery. Simon Greenish, the director of Bletchley Park Trust, said the reconstruction was an "astonishing achievement". He said: "What was done at Bletchley has affected all our lives in one way or another because the Second World War would not have ended when it did if it wasn't for Bletchley."
Frank Carter, one of the mathematicians involved, said: "Without Bletchley the war could have lasted another two years. That would have meant atomic weapons in Europe, more and more devastating weapons and many, many more deaths. That's why we believed it was necessary to have this machine available for schoolchildren, and adults, to see exactly what the contribution of this remarkable place was like."
The bombe worked not as a proto-computer – that was the role played by the later machine Colossus, also developed at Bletchley – but as an electro-mechanical machine that tried out all the possible combinations in which the German encoding machine Enigma could be set. It did so at a speed which meant that the Bletchley team could read messages from German military and naval commanders, who assumed that Enigma was unbreakable, within nine hours.
Ruth Bourne, 80, a Bletchley guide now, first arrived as a worker in 1944. "It was a very humdrum existence," she said. "All we knew then was that we were German code-breaking, end of story."
The project will open to the public on Sept 23.
Former bombe operator Jean Valentine is reunited with a restored, fully-functioning machine at Bletchley Park and [inset] during the war.
Thus Colossus was the world's first electronic computer, and should be celebrated as such. Like Turing's Bombes, and indeed like Turing, it was air brushed from History with the rest of Churchill's Golden Geese. Two years saved from WWII? A modest claim, Bletchley probably saved the UK from defeat, particularly in the Atlantic, which could have resulted in a Nazi or Soviet run Europe. About time Turing was acknowledged as the one, above all others, responsible for that success and rehabilitated from the sad and lonely fate he suffered from his own hands in 50s Manchester.
The code breaking feats of the Bletchley teams led by Turing have been marginalised by the way that we've recorded and remembered our history. The great military exploits of WW2 - the B of B, the sinking of the Bismarck, the Atlantic campaign ("The Cruel Sea"), D Day - have understandably overshadowed the untelegenic activities of a bunch of boffins beavering away in a collection of huts. The need to preserve secrecy was for a long time another factor that served to preserve the Enigma secret
However, after the Bletchley story finally emerged some 10-15 years ago, one might have expected some posthumous recognition for Turing but to my knowledge it didn't happen.
A new building at the QinetiQ site at Malvern has been named after him - little reward I know but it's a start.
How should he best be honoured posthumously..?
sv
However, after the Bletchley story finally emerged some 10-15 years ago, one might have expected some posthumous recognition for Turing but to my knowledge it didn't happen.
A new building at the QinetiQ site at Malvern has been named after him - little reward I know but it's a start.
How should he best be honoured posthumously..?
sv
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Thus Colossus was the world's first electronic computer, and should be celebrated as such. Like Turing's Bombes, and indeed like Turing, it was air brushed from History with the rest of Churchill's Golden Geese. Two years saved from WWII? A modest claim, Bletchley probably saved the UK from defeat, particularly in the Atlantic, which could have resulted in a Nazi or Soviet run Europe. About time Turing was acknowledged as the one, above all others, responsible for that success and rehabilitated from the sad and lonely fate he suffered from his own hands in 50s Manchester.
There are many references out there, this one is my favourite :-
http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
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If one wishes to go back further, might one recommend Mr Babbage´s Analytical Engine
Alan Turing´s tour de force was not the actual building of any machinery, but the Universal Turing Machine concept. Which is what lead to the advent of the computer as we know it.
Alan Turing´s tour de force was not the actual building of any machinery, but the Universal Turing Machine concept. Which is what lead to the advent of the computer as we know it.
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I had a book from the library recently which gave a history of Bletchly Park and the GCHQ establishment from the point of view of the people that worked there. In the final chapter it gave a summing up of what had been achieved by the cryptoanalysis effort. The author pointed out that one of the reasons that Bletchlys part was played down at the end of the war was that the Ultra secret had been kept so successfully that many Eastern block nations still used a deriavative of enigma to encode signals, some well into the 1960s. So to admit to what had been done would have had a significant effect on our SIGINT capacity in the cold war. Blessed if I can remember the title of the book but it was a fascinating insight into the work and the social factors of the time. One of which was that at one point only Classics academics were considered for the job, mostly by personal recomendation.
Only 'Proper' people were invited. Mathematicians and Physicists were considered to be too erratic and not the type at all!
Only 'Proper' people were invited. Mathematicians and Physicists were considered to be too erratic and not the type at all!
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It would seem there are already some monuments to Turing, especially in Manchester (Blue Plaques etc), but no national one, which, all PC aside, should surely be in the Capital City. The famous 'vacant' plinth in Trafalgar Square would seem appropriate in many ways, for here we already honour a previous hero who saved us from subjugation by a Continental Tyrant, using unconventional methods, and who had scandalised contemporary society. The present custodian of this site, Ken Livingstone would surely be receptive to honouring a National Hero who was the antithesis of a military commander, and yet arguably was more responsible for saving his country from such subjugation than anyone else, with the possible exception of Churchill. Discuss?
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On that basis I'd have a section set aside in the British Museum - an altogether airier and more pleasant place than the Science Museum anyway, which would be the more 'normal' place to consider appropriate to recognise a scientist. Perhaps also a plaque at the Royal Society, if there isn't already one there.
The BM would be more in keeping with the great historical contribution he made to the advancement of society, regardless of whether we approve of his other foibles. This in itself would have a kind of appropriate irony, given his imprisonment for having 'alternative preferences', by putting him up with the best of British for his quite remarkable contribution to science and the way we live - and will continue to advance.
