Existing comment:
Code Buster:
The original electro-mechanical "Bombe" -- named by its Polish inventors either for its ticking sound or a popular ice cream dessert called a bomba -- decrypted prewar three-rotor Enigma messages. Up to 1938, this sufficed. Then the Germans added two extra rotors, making the Enigma too sophisticated for the Poles' limited technical capacities.
Led by Alan Turing, a British team at Bletchley Park devised a high-speed Bombe. With five hundred electrical relays, eleven miles of wiring, and a million soldered joints, it tested guessed plaintexts against intercepted cryptograms to see whether any Enigma setting would produce that result. If one were found, it would be the key for all messages sent on that cryptonet for that day. |