wow, cool trip to see the history of the turning point of the war
ghaasl said
Jun 9, 2024
That’s so cool, John. Grandpa Joe was there, 80 years ago. What a powerful thing to see.
John D said
Jun 18, 2024
One of the places we toured in England was Bletchley Park. Arguably it was one of the secret locations of the Allied war. Those working there were sworn to secrecy under penalty of death, and we heard stories from our guides that their grandparents STILL (or did) tell them they worked in a "Radio Factory"... never what the actually did.
The problem was this device - Enigma. The Germans used it to encode messages. Between the possibilities of using 3 of 5 possible rotors (each with different crosswiring), 1 of 26 possible initial settings (A - Z) for each of 3 rotors, the rotors moving/advancing positions on every keystroke, then the combinations of the front cross-wiring plugboard, there were 159,000,000,000,000,000,000 settings to try before you could crack the code. On top of this, the Germans changed the settings every day at midnight.
The solution was (arguably) the very first electro-mechanical computer. Called the "Bombe", it ran through the millions & millions of combinations.
We saw a movie on how they made the "device" that was able to crack the code. Our smart phones now are probably able to do the same things
John D said
Jun 18, 2024
That would be "Imitation Game".
It was pretty accurate, but time was highly compressed and the main film characters were composites of many many people involved.
BLyke said
Jun 18, 2024
Cheryl is currently reading "the Rose Code" for her book club. about the decoders who gathered the data
This week marks the 80th Anniversary of D-Day.
Yesterday we toured/visited the Omaha Beach landing site, Memorial(s), and the American cemetery.
Today will be Utah Beach.
One of the places we toured in England was Bletchley Park. Arguably it was one of the secret locations of the Allied war. Those working there were sworn to secrecy under penalty of death, and we heard stories from our guides that their grandparents STILL (or did) tell them they worked in a "Radio Factory"... never what the actually did.
The problem was this device - Enigma. The Germans used it to encode messages. Between the possibilities of using 3 of 5 possible rotors (each with different crosswiring), 1 of 26 possible initial settings (A - Z) for each of 3 rotors, the rotors moving/advancing positions on every keystroke, then the combinations of the front cross-wiring plugboard, there were 159,000,000,000,000,000,000 settings to try before you could crack the code. On top of this, the Germans changed the settings every day at midnight.
The solution was (arguably) the very first electro-mechanical computer. Called the "Bombe", it ran through the millions & millions of combinations.
We saw a movie on how they made the "device" that was able to crack the code.
Our smart phones now are probably able to do the same things
It was pretty accurate, but time was highly compressed and the main film characters were composites of many many people involved.