The Machines That Sparked the Beginning of the Computer Age 139
jjp9999 writes "A war of spies and electromechanical machines that took place beneath the wires during World War II not only played a crucial role in the Allies' victory, but also helped spark the beginning of the computer age. Among the devices was the Enigma, a cipher capable of producing 150,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible code combinations, and a hulking machine, the Colossus, the first programmable electronic computer, capable of decoding the Enigma."
American Crypto better than Enigma (Score:5, Informative)
In these discussions it is common to overlook Sigaba [wikipedia.org], the American encryption machine that was significantly more secure than Enigma.
Electronic Cipher Machine (ECM) Mark II [maritime.org]
Cryptanalysis of the SIGABA --- 3.4 Stepping Maze [curby.net]
The Germans that beat their heads against it referred to it as, "The big machine".
Colossus was *not* used to break Enigma (Score:4, Informative)
IIRC Colossus was used to break the Lorenz ciphers, not Enigma. BP were using the Bombs with menus for Enigma.
Re:Allies were the villians in WWII (Score:4, Informative)
Sadly, while the poster is clearly trolling with his deliberately lopsided history, the US did put well over 100,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps. These camps, while offering better conditions in most respects, bore far too close a resemblance to concentration camps for anyone with a conscience. look it up [wikipedia.org] is you need to know more.
Re:Colossus was *not* used to break Enigma (Score:2, Informative)
Oops, that should have been "bombe" not "bomb". Good info here:
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/machines.rhtm
Connections - Faith in Numbers (Score:5, Informative)
Connections - Episode 4 - "Faith in Numbers" [youtube.com]
Re:Thanks for the update Big Ben (Score:4, Informative)
But, this does give us a chance to recommend the excellent biography of Alan Turing which explains his role in the evolution of computer science and his role in breaking the German cyphers:
"Alan Turing: The Enigma" by Andrew Hodges [amazon.com]
Re:Um...isn't this NEWS for nerds? (Score:5, Informative)
Thomas Edison was a really awesome inventor
Thomas A. Edison was a really awesome businessman, opportunist, and quite possibly the world's first patent troll. Very few of the inventions he has been credited for were actually invented by him, the person. Sometimes by employees of Edison, and sometimes these were foreign inventions, bought or outright filched, and then patented in the US by Edison.
Re:Um...isn't this NEWS for nerds? (Score:4, Informative)
No, he wasn't. You've fallen for the hype (mostly created by Thos. Edison himself).
Article omits relevant information (Score:2, Informative)
Amazingly the article omits to tell us about Konrad Zuze:
"Konrad Zuse (German pronunciation: [knat tsuz]; 22 June 1910 Berlin – 18 December 1995 Hünfeld near Fulda) was a German engineer and computer pioneer. His greatest achievement was the world's first functional program-controlled Turing-complete computer, the Z3, which became operational in May 1941. He received the Werner-von-Siemens-Ring in 1964 for the Z3.[1] Much of his early work was financed by his family and commerce, but after 1939 he was given resources by the Nazi German Government.[2]
Zuse's S2 computing machine is considered to be the first process-controlled computer. In 1946, he designed the first high-level programming language, Plankalkül.[3] Zuse founded one of the earliest computer businesses on 1 April 1941 (Zuse Ingenieurbüro und Apparatebau).[4] This company built the Z4, which became the world's first commercial computer."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse