Bombe Demonstration at Bletchley Park

Here's a movie of how to turn on a Bombe and decrypt an Enigma Intercept

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Enigma
• Bombe
• Bletchley
• Crypto
• Encryption
• WWII
• Turing

[joncallas]

Variants of the Enigma machine were widely used until the 1990s. The UKUSA intel departments kept the very secret of Enigma ("Ultra") hidden until the 1970s. They were breaking traffic that other countries were using based on Enigma until the Iranians figured out what was going on because Reagan blabbed a secret on television.

[craiggybear]

Utterly, absolutely beautiful and amazing.

[TheCobraUK]

@bitgood Well said my friend, kinda ironic isn't it that the worlds (claimed) first computer was working in a shed? yet the Cabinet rooms were way down below at bunker level?

[bitgood]

@TheCobraUK

I Think this is because the cabinet rooms are in a secure location, as opposed to all this equipment, plus, you can rebuild a cabinet room, it's intrinsic value disappears quite quickly where as these machines are pretty much unique

[TheCobraUK]

@yaoiluvr007 Yes, I gathered the reasons behind it. It's just a shame that a piece of equipment so intelligent for it's time was kept as a secret? So no need to overstate the obvious! Anyway something like this would be sold off today to the highest bidder....shame really, we ruled the world with engineering (just not so reliable) ha ha.

[yaoiluvr007]

@TheCobraUK of course it was. They didn't want others to be able to get their hands on it, did they? Plus, only they had the ability to rebuild it. The others wouldn't have been able to- the plans were extremely secret. it's all political anyway.

[TheCobraUK]

I can never understand one thing...Top brass ordered the originals to be taken apart after War ended didn't they?

Yet the War cabinet rooms remain to this day unchanged? Even the clock on the wall has never been wound up since it stopped at the end of War, I find it strange that one of the most strategic machines ever built was broken up?

[ScrumptiousStrat]

The idea for the Bombe machine came from Turing but it was Harold "Doc" Keene of the British Tabulating Machine Company in Letchworth that actually designed it. The BTM company made the machines but to keep up with demand more space was needed so in Spring 1942 rented out space at Ascot Training Centre and the Spirella factory where sub-assembly work was done. Approx 210 were built with the machines at Bletchley Park being primarily used for training towards the end of the war.

[ScrumptiousStrat]

Type in: "Bletchley Park Tour" in the search box at the top of the page and look for the vids marked: "Bletchley Park Tour - Part1, 2, 3 etc". They've been done by a guy called LFraserS who is, I believe, a Tour Guide at the Park. He's done Parts 1 to 5 at the moment with more to come and they're a great documentary about the wartime activities of the Park. Very informative and well produced - well worth looking at.

[eezyrida]

Incredible to think the 200 machines this one is based on saved many thousands, or possibly millions, of lives.

What a fantastic thing to have created. Thank you, Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman. And the WRENS, who operated them, and the ladies who worked at the Spirella Corset Factory in Letchworth, who built them!

[TheEnoughisEnough]

Absolutely beautiful machie ... ca't uderstad a bloody word they are sayig though.