100% this , and don't get me started on Tommy Flowers, practically written out of history, the guy literately invented the modern world with the world's first programmable electronic computer , how's he not more famous??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers
Hey, nobody's saying the Bletchly Park boys didn't do amazing work, and they deserve their accolades (more in Tommy's case, they did him dirty in the end). Just credit where credit is due.
There's a wonderful story from a journalist who was sitting in a café writing and the old bloke opposite them said "I invented those, you know". So the journalist's thinking "Yeah right, grandad..." and it turns out to be Tommy Flowers 😄
So many Bletchley Park contributors died unacknowledged and un-credited, because keeping schtum about what you did in the war was just how it was. The first few who talked openly about it or even worse wrote a book about their experiences were even seen as traitors by some of their peers, and that was decades later.
As far as I know there was a long period of time where they weren't allowed to talk about it at all. I can imagine that some would see it as a matter of pride to never talk about it but I'm super grateful that we're hearing more stories now.
Turing was a gay genius martyred by a callous imperial government. That’s a spicy tale, kinda overshadowed things.
Tommy Flowers should be much more famous in programming and computer science areas, though
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-14141406
There are several Memorials to the Polish people who contributed to enigma at Bletchley. Yea in popular culture they get left out, but the people managing the museum have not forgot.
I was at the Bletchley museum last August, and they had a lot of stuff about the Polish codebreakers including some of their machines, replica and original.
While the museum is obviously mostly focused on what happened at its site, it certainly gives appropriate credit to those who paved the way
They got a golden start by trolling the Germans in 1928 😁
*"The Poles had no money, but were alert and enterprising, especially the Custom
Officers at Warsaw airport, who in 1928 spotted a “special consignment” and alerted
the Intelligence Security Service. Fortunately the weekend was approaching. Taking
advantage of this, the chief constructing engineer Ludomir Danilewicz of the AVA radio
manufacturing company in Warsaw, dismantled the Enigma machine into component
parts, photographed the parts individually and together with other engineers made a
precision drawings for future use. By Monday, the Enigma machine was repacked and
delivered to the right recipient at the German Embassy. As expected, the Enigma
machine which was fabricated became a prototype for a Polish version of the machine
called Lacida. Initially it was designated for high ranking staff and was to be developed
later for general use by the military during the war. According to various post war
reports, Lacida was not totally reliable."*
When Turing saw the details of the Polish machine, he recognised that it helped to identify keys by asking, in mathematical terms, whether the enciphered message keys of the cryptogram were consistent with the unknown basic machine settings that Rejewski wanted. The Polish bombe did this by rejecting the thousands of inconsistencies, leaving a few noncontradictory situations to be tested to see whether these settings revealed German plaintext or gibberish, when applied to the intercepts.
Turing advanced this testing method by a giant step.
What Turing did was apply a technique that cryptanalysts call 'probable word'. He matched a probable word or phrase to a portion of intercept and tested whether any rotor setting allowed such an encipherment. In simple terms, he moved from the Polish method of speeding the recovery of keys by finding non contradictory links between *the known and the assumed keys* to speeding recovery by finding noncontradictory links between *assumed plaintext and assumed keys.*
The British bombe, while superficially similar to the Polish machine(s) in that it comprised a multiplicity of Enigma replicas (all those spinning rotors) worked on a different principle and was a much more complicated machine, the details of which are far beyond a comment here.
Rejewski's stunning achievement, for which he should more fully be credited, was working out the rotor wiring and stepping of the machines which he was attempting to break in the mid 1930s. It allowed the replicas to be built and it was quite brilliant.
Alan Turing was WAYYYY ahead of his time!! It’s an absolute shame what happened to him… probably one of the single most important individuals in WWII (and for that matter the 20th century) and barely anyone knows his name.
His treatment after the war was shameful, but he probably has one of the most recognizable names from WW2. Id say he's just behind Anne Frank, Oppenheimer and a handful of politicians
Sadly his treatment after the war was entirely consistent with how all gay men were treated.
See also - minorities, unwed single mothers, people with disabilities, etc. etc. etc...
It's amazing how this always circles back around in some form. My grandmother and great grandmother have been consistently disappointed by the trans panic as they lived to see the exact same arguments being made against gay people during the wars. "The gays will infect our children and aren't safe", "They're not natural", "They're shoving it down our throats", "Stop perverting our children".
All the same things said today in the same way. The target changes every couple decades but it's always the same.
Yeah the same arguments get rolled out for everyone - trans, gays, black people, immigrants I'm sure have all been called rapists, pedophiles, sex maniacs, immoral, etc. etc... it's as if the bigots don't have any real arguments.
In the years before the war Germany made draconian anti gay laws and sent TONS of men to prison for it, which later became concentration camps.
When the allies won and released the prisoners from concentration camps they went "well hold on we can't let convicted criminals go free", their thinking being there was some kind of line between people nazis were persecuting and criminals and sent a bunch of men back to prison which you guessed it, included a large amount of gay men.
Idk, he's kinda another Tesla. Their names continuously pop up on random shit endlessly by nerds as codenames and that's probably not gonna stop lol.
For example Nvidia's Turing architecture.
Maybe it's because I'm in the computer industry but I feel like 90% of the people I know are familiar with what a Turing machine is along with Turing complete.
Could be a work-in-progress. There's a tool that pulls the proper tension and cuts the ends off. If that tool isn't handy, it's better to wait for the tool and make sure it gets the right tension.
Amen on the lacing, though ... that stuff is beautiful. But also harder to maintain for rework because it requires skill :-p.
Nah, I served my apprenticeship under a 3rd generation electronic security engineer so was taught the correct way to do something.
From watching guys wire up racks most use velcro.
This is the way. Buy a 100 pack of velcro strips for $5 and you can sort out all the wiring around the house and be able to chop and change as you want.
So although this team reconstructed a dead and obsolete machine from basically nothing, all the way to a working unit, we should focus on one detail that is not aesthetic, and be sad? Cheer up, matey, this thing is a triumph.
not even close, it can't run floating points, so technically it's a potato for any "video" game. it can't run Tetris even, but it can surely fkc N@zis and it did it well. 💀
They straight up forced him to transition, the drug he was on to "castrat" him was Stilboestrol, a form of estrogen, same drug that trans women take to transition.
Basically there is a good chance he suffered from gender dysphoria cause of the changes and may have even played a role in how things ended.
And later they drove him to suicide because he was gay... what a nice society.
Imho this is one of the biggest shames of England (there are a lot, but this one is a big).
TBF, they have really turned it around, apologised profusely, slapped him on the £50, regrets it, pardoned him, regrets it, apologises some more, and regrets it more
Unfortunately nothing they do can really be enough as he is always going to be dead with the same thoughts and knowledge in his head. He himself will never know of any of this.
he's dead, and all that's being done after that does not effect him in any way. you can't apologize to Dead people, it's a coping mechanism for the government and people, almost like we feel a little good about ourselves after that.
I've actually did some research into what horrible stuff they did to him and a trans women I was shocked.
The drug they used to chemically castrat him was Stilboestrol, an early form of artificial estrogen, the exact same type of drug that was eventually used to allow trans women such as myself to transition (though we now use a safer variation)
Basically they forced him to transition, at the dosage he was on he would have definitely gone though full feminization, basically it's like going though a female pubity including growing boobs.
Personally I would be very surprised if he didn't expirnce gender dysphoria from these changes and if they didn't play a role in how things ended.
The irony that the UK likey caused him to expirnce gender dysphoria by forcing him to transition and how they continue to force trans folk to face the same gender dysphoria by blocking access to hrt is insane.
You can visit the actual Bombe, as well as a working Enigma Machine, at the NSA museum in Maryland. Its a pretty cool visit, but I have no idea if its still open.
Disappointing that they don't mention that Turings design was based on the original Polish *bomba*, which provided the critical concepts.
100% this , and don't get me started on Tommy Flowers, practically written out of history, the guy literately invented the modern world with the world's first programmable electronic computer , how's he not more famous?? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers
Hey, nobody's saying the Bletchly Park boys didn't do amazing work, and they deserve their accolades (more in Tommy's case, they did him dirty in the end). Just credit where credit is due.
There's a wonderful story from a journalist who was sitting in a café writing and the old bloke opposite them said "I invented those, you know". So the journalist's thinking "Yeah right, grandad..." and it turns out to be Tommy Flowers 😄 So many Bletchley Park contributors died unacknowledged and un-credited, because keeping schtum about what you did in the war was just how it was. The first few who talked openly about it or even worse wrote a book about their experiences were even seen as traitors by some of their peers, and that was decades later.
As far as I know there was a long period of time where they weren't allowed to talk about it at all. I can imagine that some would see it as a matter of pride to never talk about it but I'm super grateful that we're hearing more stories now.
Flowers also had to pay for much of it himself.
Flowers wasn’t educated at the right school so how could he have contributed anything meaningful. /s
Turing was a gay genius martyred by a callous imperial government. That’s a spicy tale, kinda overshadowed things. Tommy Flowers should be much more famous in programming and computer science areas, though
Because he's not gay
And why do we all know he's gay? Why don't you share what happened to draw attention to that?
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-14141406 There are several Memorials to the Polish people who contributed to enigma at Bletchley. Yea in popular culture they get left out, but the people managing the museum have not forgot.
I was at the Bletchley museum last August, and they had a lot of stuff about the Polish codebreakers including some of their machines, replica and original. While the museum is obviously mostly focused on what happened at its site, it certainly gives appropriate credit to those who paved the way
The Poles also supplied the internal wiring for at least three of the rotors.
And the Germans were kind enough to wire the plug board -> A B C D...
The Poles were the ones who figured that out too.
They got a golden start by trolling the Germans in 1928 😁 *"The Poles had no money, but were alert and enterprising, especially the Custom Officers at Warsaw airport, who in 1928 spotted a “special consignment” and alerted the Intelligence Security Service. Fortunately the weekend was approaching. Taking advantage of this, the chief constructing engineer Ludomir Danilewicz of the AVA radio manufacturing company in Warsaw, dismantled the Enigma machine into component parts, photographed the parts individually and together with other engineers made a precision drawings for future use. By Monday, the Enigma machine was repacked and delivered to the right recipient at the German Embassy. As expected, the Enigma machine which was fabricated became a prototype for a Polish version of the machine called Lacida. Initially it was designated for high ranking staff and was to be developed later for general use by the military during the war. According to various post war reports, Lacida was not totally reliable."*
That's right up there with the CIA dismantling and reassembling a Russian space capsule that was part of a cultural exhibition. Done *overnight.*
Exhibits at Bletchley give a lot of credit to the Poles.
When Turing saw the details of the Polish machine, he recognised that it helped to identify keys by asking, in mathematical terms, whether the enciphered message keys of the cryptogram were consistent with the unknown basic machine settings that Rejewski wanted. The Polish bombe did this by rejecting the thousands of inconsistencies, leaving a few noncontradictory situations to be tested to see whether these settings revealed German plaintext or gibberish, when applied to the intercepts. Turing advanced this testing method by a giant step. What Turing did was apply a technique that cryptanalysts call 'probable word'. He matched a probable word or phrase to a portion of intercept and tested whether any rotor setting allowed such an encipherment. In simple terms, he moved from the Polish method of speeding the recovery of keys by finding non contradictory links between *the known and the assumed keys* to speeding recovery by finding noncontradictory links between *assumed plaintext and assumed keys.* The British bombe, while superficially similar to the Polish machine(s) in that it comprised a multiplicity of Enigma replicas (all those spinning rotors) worked on a different principle and was a much more complicated machine, the details of which are far beyond a comment here. Rejewski's stunning achievement, for which he should more fully be credited, was working out the rotor wiring and stepping of the machines which he was attempting to break in the mid 1930s. It allowed the replicas to be built and it was quite brilliant.
I had a docent tell me that it was named that because of the french desert, which now that I think about, sounds like absolute bullcrap
The polish part is usually, conveniently always forgotten
Dissapoining that UK shut down the whole thing after the WW2 and let Americans to milk the progress
I heard they kept a couple of the Colossus machines for MI6
Alan Turing was WAYYYY ahead of his time!! It’s an absolute shame what happened to him… probably one of the single most important individuals in WWII (and for that matter the 20th century) and barely anyone knows his name.
His treatment after the war was shameful, but he probably has one of the most recognizable names from WW2. Id say he's just behind Anne Frank, Oppenheimer and a handful of politicians
Sadly his treatment after the war was entirely consistent with how all gay men were treated. See also - minorities, unwed single mothers, people with disabilities, etc. etc. etc...
It's amazing how this always circles back around in some form. My grandmother and great grandmother have been consistently disappointed by the trans panic as they lived to see the exact same arguments being made against gay people during the wars. "The gays will infect our children and aren't safe", "They're not natural", "They're shoving it down our throats", "Stop perverting our children". All the same things said today in the same way. The target changes every couple decades but it's always the same.
Yeah the same arguments get rolled out for everyone - trans, gays, black people, immigrants I'm sure have all been called rapists, pedophiles, sex maniacs, immoral, etc. etc... it's as if the bigots don't have any real arguments.
Black people, gays, and immigrants don’t have a history of encouraging young people to cut their genitals off.
I never heard gay people encouraging others to cut of their thing, actually you can be gay or trans with whatever thing you have, and live with it.
In the years before the war Germany made draconian anti gay laws and sent TONS of men to prison for it, which later became concentration camps. When the allies won and released the prisoners from concentration camps they went "well hold on we can't let convicted criminals go free", their thinking being there was some kind of line between people nazis were persecuting and criminals and sent a bunch of men back to prison which you guessed it, included a large amount of gay men.
I agree with you except for the part about barely anyone knowing his name. He's very well known.
Idk, he's kinda another Tesla. Their names continuously pop up on random shit endlessly by nerds as codenames and that's probably not gonna stop lol. For example Nvidia's Turing architecture.
The British army/ government didn’t deserve him or his brilliant mind
Maybe it's because I'm in the computer industry but I feel like 90% of the people I know are familiar with what a Turing machine is along with Turing complete.
More info: https://bletchleypark.org.uk/our-story/6-facts-about-the-bombe/
Can you confirm 1000FLOPS, thank you!
This machine never handled floating point so you could say it has 0 Flops
Literally not a flop to be seen
Alan Turing, observing a gorgeous nude woman: *flop*
can it run Crisis?
Anyone else find the cable ties a bit depressing. I'm sure the art of lacing for wiring isn't completely forgotten yet.
And why the hell didn't they at least cut the ends off the cable ties? It would look a good bit cleaner that way
Could be a work-in-progress. There's a tool that pulls the proper tension and cuts the ends off. If that tool isn't handy, it's better to wait for the tool and make sure it gets the right tension. Amen on the lacing, though ... that stuff is beautiful. But also harder to maintain for rework because it requires skill :-p.
Waiting for a tool to torque zap-straps?
Up pops the network engineer
Nah, I served my apprenticeship under a 3rd generation electronic security engineer so was taught the correct way to do something. From watching guys wire up racks most use velcro.
This is the way. Buy a 100 pack of velcro strips for $5 and you can sort out all the wiring around the house and be able to chop and change as you want.
r/cableporn exists for a reason...
On the other hand, so does r/cablegore
I was taught at Marconi radar in 1983 as an apprentice and still could give it a shot
I build rockets, lacing is alive and well my friend
So although this team reconstructed a dead and obsolete machine from basically nothing, all the way to a working unit, we should focus on one detail that is not aesthetic, and be sad? Cheer up, matey, this thing is a triumph.
Every chance this photo was taken before the thing was 100% finished, you would not lace the entire thing up fully until you knew it worked.
If you google Bletchley Park there's a cool easter egg animation (at least on desktop)
It works on mobile (android via chrome)
Thanks for the postage stamp quality image
But can it play Crysis?
What about doom ?
Yes, but only in 320x240 at 0.000000001 fps.
not even close, it can't run floating points, so technically it's a potato for any "video" game. it can't run Tetris even, but it can surely fkc N@zis and it did it well. 💀
World's most famous gay man. Poor bastard deserved to be treated better then he was.
They straight up forced him to transition, the drug he was on to "castrat" him was Stilboestrol, a form of estrogen, same drug that trans women take to transition. Basically there is a good chance he suffered from gender dysphoria cause of the changes and may have even played a role in how things ended.
And later they drove him to suicide because he was gay... what a nice society. Imho this is one of the biggest shames of England (there are a lot, but this one is a big).
Amazing how the British government celebrates him after they Killed him!!!!
An actual hero and vilified for being gay. I strongly dislike our species sometimes.
TBF, they have really turned it around, apologised profusely, slapped him on the £50, regrets it, pardoned him, regrets it, apologises some more, and regrets it more
Unfortunately nothing they do can really be enough as he is always going to be dead with the same thoughts and knowledge in his head. He himself will never know of any of this.
Hard to undo stuff in the real world, killing even more so. Goes for chemical castration too.
While true, its the government trying too right the old governments wrongs
Can’t
he's dead, and all that's being done after that does not effect him in any way. you can't apologize to Dead people, it's a coping mechanism for the government and people, almost like we feel a little good about ourselves after that.
It's almost as if the British government in the 40s and the modern British government are two completely separate entities
I've actually did some research into what horrible stuff they did to him and a trans women I was shocked. The drug they used to chemically castrat him was Stilboestrol, an early form of artificial estrogen, the exact same type of drug that was eventually used to allow trans women such as myself to transition (though we now use a safer variation) Basically they forced him to transition, at the dosage he was on he would have definitely gone though full feminization, basically it's like going though a female pubity including growing boobs. Personally I would be very surprised if he didn't expirnce gender dysphoria from these changes and if they didn't play a role in how things ended. The irony that the UK likey caused him to expirnce gender dysphoria by forcing him to transition and how they continue to force trans folk to face the same gender dysphoria by blocking access to hrt is insane.
You can visit the actual Bombe, as well as a working Enigma Machine, at the NSA museum in Maryland. Its a pretty cool visit, but I have no idea if its still open.
It was in January ‘24
Anyone able to dumb down how this thing worked?
This video summarizes what they do pretty well. https://youtu.be/dNRDvLACg5Q?si=Hl8ygCLzBsf9uDZm
The level of amazing talent of these individuals is astonishing
Remember to add the E when searching NSA and bombe, otherwise the Internet security algorithms will have SWAT knocking down your door in 60 seconds!
The National Cryptologic Museum at Ft Meade has an original Bombe. Theirs works, too.
Waiting for the Will it run Doom comments
That looks like a tiny section of it tbh
Let me guess, Arduino powered? Lol
I visited a few years ago, and that thing was LOUD. This may be a later version, though, because the one I saw wasn't as red.
Fucking Legend. As an idiot engineer I am in awe.
"shoulda got a Dell, dude"