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Bombe Machines
In the history of cryptography, the bombe was an electromechanical device used by British cryptologists to help break German Enigma-machine-generated signals during World War II. The bombe was designed by Alan Turing, with an important refinement suggested by Gordon Welchman.
The bombe was named after, and inspired by, a device that had been designed in 1938 by Polish Cipher Bureau cryptologist Marian Rejewski, and known as the "cryptologic bomb" (Polish: "bomba kryptologiczna"). The British bombe was referred to by Group Captain Winterbotham as a "Bronze Goddess" because its case was made of bronze.[1] The devices were more prosaically described by operators as being "like great big metal bookcases".[2]
A standard German Enigma employed, at any one time, a set of three rotors (in the German Navy, from early 1942, four rotors), each of which could be set in any of 26 positions. The bombe tried each possible rotor position and applied a test. The test eliminated thousands of positions of the rotors; the few potential solutions were then examined by hand. In order to use a bombe, a cryptanalyst first had to produce a "crib" – a section of ciphertext for which he could guess the corresponding plaintext.
Bombe Machines
In the history of cryptography, the bombe was an electromechanical device used by British cryptologists to help break German Enigma-machine-generated signals during World War II. The bombe was designed by Alan Turing, with an important refinement suggested by Gordon Welchman.
The bombe was named after, and inspired by, a device that had been designed in 1938 by Polish Cipher Bureau cryptologist Marian Rejewski, and known as the "cryptologic bomb" (Polish: "bomba kryptologiczna"). The British bombe was referred to by Group Captain Winterbotham as a "Bronze Goddess" because its case was made of bronze.[1] The devices were more prosaically described by operators as being "like great big metal bookcases".[2]
A standard German Enigma employed, at any one time, a set of three rotors (in the German Navy, from early 1942, four rotors), each of which could be set in any of 26 positions. The bombe tried each possible rotor position and applied a test. The test eliminated thousands of positions of the rotors; the few potential solutions were then examined by hand. In order to use a bombe, a cryptanalyst first had to produce a "crib" – a section of ciphertext for which he could guess the corresponding plaintext.