Perry says:
> [Sandy Harris's message] contradicts Jim's message, which I tend to give more
> credence to. Anyone care to settle the point? --Perry]
Not hearing a response from someone else, I'll annotate a bit... merely
corroborative detail intended to lend artistic verisimilitude to an
otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
Blue Flux:
>> So, does this article refer to the ENIGMA ciphers or some other cipher?
Sandy:
> [The British at Bletchley Park] built two generations of cracking engine
> specifically for Enigma. Flowers was the main designer of Collosus, the
> second one.
The first generation of Enigma crackers was the "bombe", built to make use
of "cribs" to break the cipher. When the German Navy went to 4-rotor machines
the British ran out of resources -- too many combinations -- and asked the
U.S. for help. At Arlington Hall the Americans built a large number of
4-rotor bombes -- this could constitute the "second generation" you refer to.
Flowers was indeed the main designer of Colossus. According to Bauer (Decrypted
Secrets) the prototype Colossus Mark I was ready to go to work in December 1943,
and was used against the "tunny" cipher. It was a 1500-tube machine, and Bauer
says it was the first functioning electronic computer in the world. I thought
the German Zuse Z3 was earlier, but what do I know... The second generation of
Colossus, the Mark II, was ready on 1 Jun 1944, and was in time to provide D-Day
support for the Normandy landings. In all ten Colossus machines were built.
I've seen no indication that any of them was used against Enigma, but they were
general-purpose machines that could do a variety of tasks. However, the bombe
was specifically designed to do Enigma crib testing at electrical circuit
speeds, and simulating it with a vacuum tube computer would not have been
very effective.
This all agrees with the Colossus articles in Hinsley & Stripp's "Codebreakers"
(not to be confused with Kahn's book with a similar title).
--
Jim Gillogly
21 Blotmath S.R. 1998, 17:53
12.19.5.12.4, 9 Kan 17 Zac, First Lord of Night
