Friday, 8 September 2006

Living history

Love this! Real living history and real heroes in an age which believes that fame is the route to wealth and working hard is something that only idiots might do.
It has taken 10 years and about 60 volunteers to rebuild piece-by-piece a replica of the Turing Bombe - the vital machine which cracked the Nazis' Enigma Code.

Widow Ruth Bourne, 80, had to wait until the 1970s before she could reveal to her husband Stephen Bentall what she had been up to during the war.
There is a clear link, a solid relationship, between the work there and the tool you are using to collect and read this message - and possibly the language you are reading it in too!

2 careful considerations:

Hazeofpink said...

Enjoyed reading that. I've just watched the film Enigma which was on the t.v. tonight. Shame that after the war they gave it all up and let the commencement of computing go by!

Nogbad said...

No choice really. It's claimed that the UK broke up the bombes and all other "computers" as part of the agreement with the US at the end of the war. The fear was that the USSR would learn about the development of computers before the US was ready to take advantage. Of course the British claim about breaking Enigma ignores the work done by the Polish - they broke Enigma first while their cavalry were being brushed aside by tthe Blitzkreig