1944 Bletchley Park dictionary

It is a very touching document: The 1944 Bletchley Park Cryptographic Dictionary has been published.

For those who don't know what is the matter with this, I will explain. Bletchley park was the english place where the Enigma code had been broken by the doctor Turing's group of researchers during the World War II. Without this code break, the victory would probably not be able.
We are speaking about the very first hack, about the foundation of modern computing, and about the creation of modern cryptanalyze!

It is astonishing to discover the number of terms we use which are from this period.

They also came up with the idea of public key cryptography about four years before RSA Security IIRC (I had to do a presentation/essay on this about a month ago), but they never received the proper credit because at the time everything they did was classified information. I think such information becomes declassified automatically after 40 years in the UK, although sometimes it can stay under the Official Secrets Act for longer.

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Bletchley park was the english place

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Shame Hollywood didn't read this post before making U-571. (sorry, I have a real axe to grind about that film :p).

Agree about U-571, also the / our / my government ran Turing out of work after the war, as he was homosexual, and therefore a liability ?? in the cold war ??

edit : Turing cracked the Enigma by taking a WAG ( wild a--ed guess) that the first reel was alphabetical !!! and not in itself coded by displacement, thus bringing the numbers down from billions to only a few billion !!!! Have read books on this guy, he was definately a one off. turned me on to Cryptography, which in turn led me here.

For anyone who hasn't read "The Code Book" by Simon Singh, it has a really good section on turing, the enigma, and bletchley park. It's a great book. Also covers some very old concepts all the way into quantum cryptography.

public key cryptography was not thought up by Turing, or at Bletchly park, thats on the opposite side of the country to the true place where it was thought about, GCHQ, chelteham.

I forget his name but he thought of the idea while at home, he couldnt write anything down because he was banned from writing about work outside of work for security reasons.

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I think such information becomes declassified automatically after 40 years in the UK, although sometimes it can stay under the Official Secrets Act for longer.

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I know that for some cases its 70years, so pretty much life really ;)

As already stated Simon Singh's book is excellent, and its got allot about the british efforts, seen as its writen by a british author.

i2c

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Originally posted here by i2c
public key cryptography was not thought up by Turing, or at Bletchly park, thats on the opposite side of the country to the true place where it was thought about, GCHQ, chelteham.

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Argh, forgetful me, of course it was. His name's in the Code Book - unfortunately I've misplaced my copy at the moment so I can't clear up the matter. :)

The point I was making though was that people in that industry didn't get credit for what they did purely because of national security, which seems a shame but on the other hand you could see how the government justified it at the time.

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As already stated Simon Singh's book is excellent, and its got allot about the british efforts, seen as its writen by a british author.

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It's always nice to hear the story from an non-American point of view. :)

I believe it was cox that invented public-key crypto at gchq.

Another good read on this topic is Cryptonomicon, but some author I can't remember right now. It follows the lives of several world war II guys, and some of their children in present day.

Cryptonomicon is a great book written by Neal Stephenson.
This story is gripping and very humorous, without abandoning tech aspects.

Simon Singh also did a book, "The Science of Secrecy" Cryptography from earliest to Quantum. There was a comp in the book, crack ALL the code test papers and win large amounts of money. I fell by the wayside after the basic displacement and frequency types, ie: first two sections ???
Cryptonomicon IS a great read, class it as 'factual' ? lots of details, good story.
The first computer was also built in the UK during the war, (WWII) by a GPO engineer, quite an amazing tale on Brit TV a while back.