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The computer that helped win World War II

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Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#41

Post by colechristensen »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #14
colechristensen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean Henry Ford was only not a Nazi in the sense that he wasn't a card carrying member of a foreign political organization. There were plenty of similar Nazi supporting executives in corporate America in the 1930s. And why wouldn't there be? It wasn't like fascism was a one time thing led by one person, it was all over Europe and spread to America, much like Communism in the other direction who similarly wanted to…

It was a much scarier time because far more people were far more competent. I doubt that if you took the smartest people today and equipped them with the knowledge and resources around at the time - and no more than that, so no modern insights or historical knowledge - they'd be able to do what Turing, Flowers, and the others did. Reverse engineering and breaking an encryption protocol by hand and then mechanising it…

They were scientific revolutions ripe for the right people at the right time. These people are uncommon but they're always around, there was nothing particularly special about that generation or those few that found themselves where they did. If the events of the world wars didn't collapse civilization to the degree of the late bronze age collapse, the fall of the western roman empire, the Maya collapse, etc. then computing machinery was pretty inevitable in the span of a few decades.

You can usually make the argument that any particular scientific or engineering revolution would have happened anyway with different people nor more than 25 years or so later, at least any advancement since the mid 19th century.

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#42

Post by Kim_Bruning »

tialaramex wrote: post #31
kubatyszko wrote: post #23

I have a major problem with that article, it completely ignores Polish mathematicians' contributions who literally GAVE the brits the codes 5 weeks BEFORE the start of WWII. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski

This article is about Lorenz but you're thinking about Enigma , a completely different cipher used in a different way and by different parts of the German military in the same war and broken, as the article explains, using a Computer, not based on tricks learned from the Poles. It's like you've seen an article about the Knicks winning a basketball game and you ask why it doesn't mention Igor Shesterkin - who plays ic…

The fact that Lorenz was broken was kept secret for the longest time. Lots of people don't know about it!

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#43

Post by vee-kay »

Someone wrote: post #37

FTA: The room-size machine weighed around a tonne. I think “around a tonne” is very light for “room-size”, so I googled, and found https://www.tnmoc.org/news-releases/2019/2/5/colossus-decryp... , which says: “Standing 2m high, 5 m wide and almost 4 m deep (7 ft by 17 ft by 11 ft), Colossus weighed five tonnes, and used 8 kW of power. Colossus Mark II, which arrived at Bletchley Park in May 1944, had 2,500 valves and…

[dead]

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#44

Post by jshier »

Can anyone recommend a more technical book on the design and operation of the Colossus? I've found Colossus, a collections of essays edited by B. Jack Copeland, but not much else, at least on Amazon. (Also interested in anything on Zuse's computers, as I've mostly studied the Atanasoff-Berry Computer and Eniac).

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#45

Post by andoma »

I’ve posted this before but if you’re in London and have a day to spare it’s very easy to get to Bletchley Park. Just take the train from Euston station. 1 hour ride worst case. Then it’s a five minute walk from the station. Well worth it.

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#46

Post by t43562 »

Appended is a walkaround video of the Colossus at the National Museum of Computing next to Bletchley Park which is, FYI, a much better and far more interesting place to visit than Bletchley Park itself on the same site - and much cheaper. They have a bombe that cracked enigma, the colossus and some other German encoding machines and they are incredible to see. The lectures were absolutely fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W7w6YXaNvt8

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#47

Post by a-dub »

jshier wrote: post #44

Can anyone recommend a more technical book on the design and operation of the Colossus? I've found Colossus, a collections of essays edited by B. Jack Copeland, but not much else, at least on Amazon. (Also interested in anything on Zuse's computers, as I've mostly studied the Atanasoff-Berry Computer and Eniac).

the bletchley park trust sells (used to?) pamphlets in the gift shop that they call "reports" which have been written by some of the rebuild team and other associates.

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#48

Post by t43562 »

andoma wrote: post #45

I’ve posted this before but if you’re in London and have a day to spare it’s very easy to get to Bletchley Park. Just take the train from Euston station. 1 hour ride worst case. Then it’s a five minute walk from the station. Well worth it.

Go to the National Museum of Computing just next door and save a bomb and see the actual bombe! IMO the house is of minimal interest compared to the machines but costs a lot.

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#49

Post by tialaramex »

t43562 wrote: post #48
andoma wrote: post #45

I’ve posted this before but if you’re in London and have a day to spare it’s very easy to get to Bletchley Park. Just take the train from Euston station. 1 hour ride worst case. Then it’s a five minute walk from the station. Well worth it.

Go to the National Museum of Computing just next door and save a bomb and see the actual bombe! IMO the house is of minimal interest compared to the machines but costs a lot.

The Bletchley Park museum is basically everything else on that site except the NMC. If you're interested in Computing then yeah the NMC is the only part worth visiting, but if you're interested in intelligence, code breaking etc. or in what life was actually like during WW2 then the museum is pretty interesting.

The house is part of the museum these days, so a ticket for the museum covers the house (which is, yes, basically just one of a great many English stately homes you might visit and not by any means the most interesting) as well as numerous huts and exhibits about the larger intelligence operation in WW2 and what else was done on that site beyond simple "breaking Enigma" (the most famous thing) and Lorenz (which is why Colossus exists)

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