From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Wed Apr 30 2003 - 03:54:26 MDT
Dear Extropes/Transhumans:
Last Monday evening, I had the pleasure to visit a place near Milton
Keyes, England called: Bletchley Park. I was with a group of ten
people from my ESA Earth dust/debris project working group. Our
formal meeting took place in Milton Keynes during Monday and Tuesday
and so Monday evening was our social evening night out, hosted by
the Planetary Sciences department at Open University, and the
company: Unispace Kent.
Bletchley Park
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk
This was one of the most interesting places I have ever visited, and
I recommend that, if ever you are within a couple hundred kilometers
of London, set aside _at least_ one day and devour this place.
Bletchley Park was the place that, during WWII, the German military
cypher machine ENIGMA was studied and methods devised to enable the
Allied forces to to decipher secret communications. It was also here
that the early important research and design and implementation
(Alan Turing's direction) for the world's first computer: the
Colossus took place.
Bletchley Park is an elaborate museum now, spanning many acres and
buildings demonstrating every aspect about cryptography. With
regards to the machines designed: there are replicas, some working
replicas too (A working "Bombe" that is a copy of that built by
Turing to decipher the ENIGMA will be ready by the end of this year
the lecturer told us, and one can already try out a German 60 year
old ENIGMA machine.)
What is the ENIGMA machine? You can see pictures and read some
text here:
The ENIGMA machine
http://www.iwm.org.uk/online/enigma/enigma7.htm
http://www.iwm.org.uk/online/enigma/enigma8.htm
From September 1938, Alan Turing gave part-time assistance to the
British cryptanalytic organisation, the Government Code and Cypher
School to break code produced by the ENIGMA machine. Their work was
transformed by the transfer of information from Polish mathematical
cryptanalysts in July 1939. From 4 September 1939, Turing worked
full-time at the GC&CS war-time headquarters, Bletchley Park.
I've never been a 'war buff', but I'm a physicist, and seeing parts
of the electro-mechanical machines with dozens of rotors, running
through sequences of letters to break codes tickled me to no end. In
addition, one learns about the human elements- how the scientists at
Bletchley Park took advantage of mistakes made by the code senders-
for example: forgetting to reset the rotors to their initial
positions, noticing significant words, hearing how the Italian
pilots regularly goofed with the German ENIGMA machines given to
them, which helped the codebreakers more, added dimensions to the
story. In addition, and even more tickling of my fancy: Bletchley
Park was indeed, where the beginnings of the computer took place,
that is, the results of Turing's work. Turing's first computer
design during the war was implemented with 1920s parts from the
British Telegraph company. It only required the right people being
together at the right time to put the already existing know-how
together, and we have our first electromechanical computer.
A regular tour takes about 4 or 5 hours (our dust/debris group got
the 'condensed version' and all of us want to return), and I think
that you won't regret spending the full day there. More than enough
material to see and to learn.
Bletchley Park and the Codebreakers
http://www.iwm.org.uk/online/enigma/enigma10.htm
Some pieces of Alan Turing's writings during his time at Bletchley Park
http://www.turing.org.uk/publications/profsbook.html
http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/scrapbook/treatise.html
Happy (almost)May Day,
Amara
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
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