It has taken 10 years and about 60 volunteers, among them retired computer experts and telecommunications engineers, to rebuild piece-by-piece a replica of the Turing Bombe – the vital machine which cracked the Nazis’ Enigma Code.
Against impossible odds the electro-mechanical device enabled cryptographers to decode more than 3,000 German messages in a day, changing the course of World War II.
The Turing Bombes were once Britain’s best kept secret but on Wednesday members of the project team demonstrated how codes were broken at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire.
John Harper, the 69-year-old former chartered engineer who oversaw the team of enthusiasts, never doubted the ambitious plan would come to fruition: “It has been difficult and I am totally shattered.
He said: “The first two years were a re-drawing exercise, we did not actually start making the machine.
Enigma replica ‘homage to heroes’
Comments
2 responses to “Enigma replica ‘homage to heroes’”
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re: Enigma replica ‘homage to heroes’
I thought the Americans did all this according to Hollywood
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re: Enigma replica ‘homage to heroes’
The fact it took them more than double the length of the Second World War to recreate it is something of a testament to the engineers who created the first one!
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