National Museum of Computing to hold live Enigma code-breaking demo with a Bombe | Hacker News Reader

National Museum of Computing to hold live Enigma code-breaking demo with a Bombe

theregister.co.uk

54 pointsbaud14725814 comments

This demo is apparently using a bombe that is a recreation of the original. Does anybody know when it was made or how faithful it is to the originals? I recall reading that the bombes were essentially hand-built, one-offs, each one slightly different from the others as improvements were made and, what plans there were, weren't complete.

"In 1994 a group led by John Harper of the BCS Computer Conservation Society started a project to build a working replica of a bombe. The project required detailed research, and took 13 years of effort before the replica was completed, which was then put on display at the Bletchley Park museum."

...says Wikipedia

This was initially confusing to me and may be confusing to others who've visited Bletchley Park

The Bletchley Park site, containing the not terribly interested mansion building itself, and a large museum of WWII code breaking stuff, is one charity, but on their site, in another building, is a different charity, The National Museum of Computing, TNMOC.

Historically the Bombes (electro-mechanical devices used to help break Enigma) were part of Bletchley Park's museum, but apparently earlier in 2018 they moved to TNMOC.

This is weird because Bombes are really, really not computers, unlike Colossus, which TNMOC looks after but is open to the public from the other charity's site. Colossus is one of many machines on the cusp, it's an electronic computer, but it really only does one thing and "re-programming" it involves almost taking it to pieces. But Bombes are no more computers than, say, an old-fashioned mechanical cash register is.

So this demo will be hosted by TNMOC, but the machines shown will be ones you may have seen (unless you went there this summer) at the non-TNMOC Bletchley Park WW2 crypto museum. A miniature version of this (part breaking Enigma) used to be a demo that Bletchley would do live for visitors several times a day, but TNMOC may not be offering that demo any more on their tours, I'm not sure. I assume the demo for this stream will be far more complete than the average visitor to Bletchley was interested in watching although I doubt it will have a step where people try to guess German "cribs" for the message text.

A problem for this demo, and any dramatisation of breaking Enigma, is that it doesn't feel like very much. It's loud, and the Bombes are doing stuff because they're mechanical in nature, but ultimately you can neither experience what it's like to invent this extraordinary machine, nor what it is like to be the machine while it's working, so it's emotionally a bit empty. In a movie you can suppose that breaking the code will prevent our heroes being killed by Nazis or something, but it's still a bit arms-length really.

Also from what I've understood, the Bombe which will be used to do the code-breaking is a replica.

They dont call it a replica. Its a rebuild. It's not a copy of an existing Bombe is a unique machine built from the ground up. It is identical to the machines used in WWII.

Thanks, James

Thank you for your correction. The article called it a replica and I did not look for further information on the subject.

> This is weird because Bombes are really, really not computers

That's why it's generally called machines rather than computers. But the media plays loose with words to make the story more interesting.

Also, the british bombes were way too slow to be effective.

It was actually the US Navy that produced effective code breaking bombes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe#US_Navy_Bombe

You can see one at the National Cryptologic Museum in Maryland.

This rather depends on your perspective of what the word "effective" means.

Those US navy bombes are for Kriegsmarine "M4" Enigma, which didn't even exist when Bletchley Park began breaking Enigma. They came on line in mid-1943. So, by this point the Axis is defeated in Africa, and Barbarossa is failing, the German Army is in trouble on the Eastern Front, it has faced some big military defeats there and cannot continue to sustain these losses, but Russia hardly seems likely to accept a peace deal after being betrayed previously.

Now, the war wasn't _over_ in 1943 even in Europe. But there had been three years of code-breaking (including of Enigma) at Bletchley by that point. It's true that Huts attacking M4 sent data across the Atlantic to the US navy, but again, that's from mid-1943, prior to that the British were using their slower machines because you can't win wars by waiting until you have better equipment.

Thats just not true... The British Bombes worked just fine and were VERY effective. You might be confused in thinking that the British Bombe was a single machine. It wasn't there were several iterations of it and it evolved throughout the war to meet the new demands. Additionally the ORIGINAL Bombe didn't include the diagonal board enhancement invented by Gordon Welchman. This improved the performance of the Bombes greatly.

The US Bombes were better and workloads moved over to them for that reason, mainly because the US could make them faster with a better (later) design. But they come online 3 years after the first British Bombes which were in effective use until the US Bombes were available. It was the 4 rotor naval enigma that slowed things down somewhat.

Thanks, James

You can see an original Bombe at the national cryptologic museum in Fort Meade Maryland. Best museum I’ve ever seen.

Indeed. A very underrated museum. Also the volunteer docents are, in some cases, retired NSA tech personnel and can share (the declassified parts of) some very cool stories. On a visit in 2010 or so we met an elderly woman that had pioneered some important aspects of satellite-based ELINT and SIGINT.

Yassss! The hubby and I love going up there to hang out with them whenever we can. Don't forget to talk to the librarians! They have some amazing stories too but I suspect most people don't realize they can go in there.

This machine was housed within the Bletchley Park museum for years. It has recently moved to the TNMOC

Thanks, James

It looks like there won’t be any silly Digital Ocean PR stunt disingenuously pretending to be ML-related this time, which is a relief.

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