The codebreaker who saved 'millions of lives' | Hacker News Reader

The codebreaker who saved 'millions of lives'

bbc.co.uk

77 pointstpatke30 comments

Would be nice to mention the whole effort, not only Turing. Like the fact that Poles were reading Enigma encrypted messages before the WW2, and send all information they aquired to France and Great Brittain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma#Pol...

I mean - Turing was brilliant, but why everybody only tell the story from the middle ?

I have always felt that Tommy Flowers' incredible contribution (i.e. building the first electronic, programmable computer) is all-too-frequently overlooked. I suppose it just makes a better story to talk about a lone genius rather than a group of collaborators.

I recently learned about Tommy Flowers and Colossus from this book: http://www.amazon.com/Colossus-secrets-Bletchley-code-breaki... The British kept Colossus secret for a too long and Flowers did not get enough credit (and von Neumann seems to get too much). BTW, I do recommend the above book. But we warned that it's a collection of essays by different authors so it can be uneven reading.

Thanks, I'll take a look at the book. Sometimes essays are fine because you can cherry-pick the good ones.

Well it does say he was a 'key player', not the only person involved. Plus as it's a retrospective on Turing's contributions I think they're allowed to focus on a sole character.

(But several other excellent Turing stories have mentioned the other players involved, Ars had an excellent article about it if I remember rightly).

It does note this:

"Turing helped adapt a device originally developed by Poland to create the bombe" - under the device caption

And as someone else said, this is about celebrating Turing's 100th birthday.

Indeed, and without taking away anything form Turing, it was Rejewski, Różycki and Zygalski code-breakers working at the request of the Polish army that broke the Enigma codes. I believe they summoned numerous cryptologists, three of which were these guys.

It'd also be nice if they mentioned that the government orchestrated his death by castrating him for the sinful, heinous crime of... being gay.

It would also be good to extend the mentions beyond just codebreakers, including the Royal Navy personnel who boarded damaged U-boats in order to retrieve code books and other equipment, not knowing if the vessel would sink at any minute.

Are you sure? All that was done by Americans - I saw the movie!

Hollywood History, about as reliable as Hollywood technology.

Quick! django the unix firewalls!

I once went to a birthday party. When the cake came out and everyone was singing "happy birthday", I said, in a loud, authoritative voice: "You know who really deserves a party is..."

Needless to say I wasn't invited the following year. ;-)

[The above story is totally fictitious, in order to make a point.]

I mean - Turing was brilliant, but why everybody only tell the story from the middle ?

Turing was English.

(also the allies of the UK & USA were occupying Poland.)

Also Bill Tutte made a much greater mathematical contribution to cryptography and broke the rather more complex Tunny code - between the guy with the bad moustache and his generals.

Code Breakers of Blechley Park is a pretty nice one hour BBC documentary on the subject. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF48sl15OCg

It's a shame that even now, Alan Turing, since he was gay, wouldn't be allowed to get married in the UK.

Although ironically he would in Germany

Could he? Germany only has registered/civil unions/partnerships, yes?

Yes, sorry I saw the law that civil partners had exactly the same rights but they did vote down the law calling it marriage

We also have civil partnerships in the UK, with all the same rights and benefits.

Yes the UK has "civil parternship" which is legally the same as marriage (except you cannot get civil partnered in the offical state religion/church).

Some countries (e.g. Ireland) have "civil partnership" laws which does not have the same rights as marriage.

Still, "separate but equal" is not good.

Yup, hence the (anti-)same-sex marriage campaign.

The UK Government just finished accepting entries for a consultation on plans to allow same-sex (as well as transgender marriage) in England and Wales, and the Scottish Government is also running a consultation.

Yes, and it's very encouraging. Especially seeing Cameroon, a Conservative Prime Minister say "I support gay marriage because I'm a conservative". Thankfully things are changing. The people's attitudes are changing.

Cameron, not Cameroon (although that's also a valid last name ;)

But yes, indeed, it is good to see things changing. And cross-party support, with the exception of the Euroskeptics.

If this article piqued your interest, be sure to read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

Speaking of which, I recently read this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005LW5JL2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

Which is about WWII in the Pacific, up to the battle of Midway. He talks about the code breaking efforts in Hawaii, and I immediately recognized one of the minor characters from Cryptonimicon - the guy in charge of the cryptanalysis efforts - who was apparently a bit eccentric, and not big on military formalities. I didn't realize that the character in the book was based on someone real.

It's a very well written book, and I'd highly recommend it, as well, as, of course, Cryptonimicon.

Edit - here's a link that talks about him some:

http://www.worldwar2history.info/Midway/mission.html

Wasn't aware that he was a real person either.

Several other characters in that book are also based on real people, albeit living (at time of writing anwyay) ones, so names and some details were changed, as well as adding some more speculation. For example the character Earl Comstock was pretty much Robert McNamara. A lot of the people in the 90's timeline seem to be based on real people Stephenson wrote about in his factual articles. (particularly the ones about cable laying in the pacific).

Cryptonomicon is a long but very good read. There's enough technical details to keep us hackers intrigued without scaring away the non techie folks. My dad read it and even though he didn't get some of the more subtle crypto jokes he very much enjoyed it without having any history of computing or security.

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