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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

#61

Post by phire »

riazrizvi wrote: post #12
kiwijimm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t resemble the computers of today, but none the less it was indeed a stored program digital computer. The first of its kind. The bombes were more akin to a special purpose calculation machine. Colossus was something a bit more special.

It was the first programmable electronic digital computing machine, yes. Special-purpose computing machines had been around since the 1600's (where they were used as textile weaving machines I think).

And the “electronic” part is important. The Z3 predates in by 2 years and was a programmable digital computer, except it used electromechanical relays.

The Z3 is arguably more programmable than colossus and it was proven to be Turing complete in its stock configuration. Though the Z3 lacked the ability to conditionally branch, so nobody realised it at the time.

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#62

Post by fragmede »

colechristensen wrote: post #41
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Except, why didn't the ancient Romans or Egyptians invent the Internet? They had enough civilization to build empires.

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#63

Post by rsamtravis »

I wasn't sure if this was going to be about Colossus, Eniac, the Norden bombsight, or what. WW2 happened right at the birth of real computing so there are a few examples of computers that helped. Heck there was an air-dropped acoustic-homing torpedo that had what is essentially a small single-purpose analog computer to direct it.

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#64

Post by dboreham »

jameshart wrote: post #25
kiwijimm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t resemble the computers of today, but none the less it was indeed a stored program digital computer. The first of its kind. The bombes were more akin to a special purpose calculation machine. Colossus was something a bit more special.

‘Stored program’ is where the debate is. Colossus was ‘programmable’ but the program was not a series of instructions executed in a sequence - it was a single data process executed on the input data against a set of stored registers. Definitely programmable, definitely capable of computing, but not a ‘stored program’ in the sense we know it today.

Having seen the replica, I noticed it has a long continuous tape loop. Was the program "stored" in the paper tape?

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#65

Post by PaulRobinson »

a-dub wrote: post #5

i had the opportunity to visit bletchley about sixteen years ago... one interesting detail was that all the colossus machines were destroyed after the war as they were seen as too powerful and dangerous. it wasn't until years later that the retired telephony engineers (this was where ee excellence lived at the time) who had built them began rebuilding them from memory as a sort of hobby/club centered at bletchley. th…

Tony Sale saved Bletchley Park. He was the instigator of the foundation and basically ran it single handed for a while. He believed deeply in it being preserved for the nation.

His main claim to fame before that was being Peter Wright’s right-hand man. Wright’s “Spycatcher”, talks of their joint exploits over the years. I got to ask Tony about it once, he was not too impressed Wright had done what he had done by writing that book.

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#66

Post by RugnirViking »

t43562 wrote: post #46

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.you…

I used to work there. I highly recommend the harwell dekatron or WITCH. It's another very old computer, 1950s. newer than colossus, but much easier to understand. It has decimal memory banks that light up, so you can literally see the memory, each of the registers, etc. If you go at the right time or ask a staff member very nicely you can see the debug mode where it can step instruction by instruction, and operation by operation through the machine code, and see the memory change at each step.

I also recommend if you have any mathematical chops asking staff about the process of cryptanalysis on enigma, and if you're really hardcore, lorenz. Its fascinating and if you get the right staff, they really have the knowledge to take you deep into how it was done. Yes many know about the exploit of using date/weather strings that appeared in a standard form, but exactly how that was used together with a huge amount of encrypted message data to reverse engineer the functioning of the machine they hadn't seen for lorenz is bonkers.

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#67

Post by labcomputer »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #13

Was there anything the Germans could have done to make Enigma foolproof encryption like we have in the modern day?

Sure, just copy the contemporary American SIGABA machine, or the cold-war ear Russian Fialka machine. The first public-domain solution for SIGABA was published only in 2023, and I believe Fialka is still unsolved (at least publicly).

A few things that help make these secure:

1. More rotors. SIGABA has 5 cipher rotors, while Fialka has 10.

2. Irregular stepping, instead of odometer-style stepping.

3. A letter can encrypt to itself.

4. Better operational protocols.

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#68

Post by ck2 »

Every time I read a story that indirectly highlights how advanced Germany because of the surreal effort needed to overcome them I realize if yet another year had been delayed in stopping Germany, they'd be running the world right now

actually if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor US may not have gotten involved at all or way way way too late

now we've evolved to use "AI" to perfectly target elementary schools without human oversight (or repercussions)

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#69

Post by colechristensen »

fragmede wrote: post #62
colechristensen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Except, why didn't the ancient Romans or Egyptians invent the Internet? They had enough civilization to build empires.

There's a tech tree, more or less.

You need steam power, chemical batteries, basic metallurgy, and the telegraph to make global communications networks obvious.

With constant conquest and expansion Rome was full of slaves which distorted the market need for mechanical power.

Hero of Alexandria made a little steam powered spinning toy which could have been the inspiration for steam power and the industrial revolution but it wasn't and the western empire was already on the path to decline. When the expansion hit its practical limit Rome fell apart instead of industrializing under the effects of Christianity and a series of decadent or just bad emperors.

Rome made ENORMOUS strides in the advancement of civilization when it came to organization and institutions it just didn't hit the industrialization spark and stopped advancing.

Re: The computer that helped win World War II

#70

Post by jameshart »

dboreham wrote: post #64
jameshart wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Stored program’ is where the debate is. Colossus was ‘programmable’ but the program was not a series of instructions executed in a sequence - it was a single data process executed on the input data against a set of stored registers. Definitely programmable, definitely capable of computing, but not a ‘stored program’ in the sense we know it today.

Having seen the replica, I noticed it has a long continuous tape loop. Was the program "stored" in the paper tape?

That was the data. Point of Collosus was to analyze ciphertexts; the text goes on the loop. It’s looped so your program can run over the data multiple times, since it’s sequential access only.
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