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Bombe Machine
1940
The Bombe Machine, a decryption device created by Alan Turing and colleagues at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.
1940
The Bombe Machine, a decryption device created by Alan Turing and colleagues at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.
The isolated man does not develop any intellectual power. It is necessary for him to be immersed in an environment of other men… He may then perhaps do a little research of his own and make a very few discoveries which are passed on to other men. From this point of view the search for new techniques must be regarded as carried out by the human community as a whole, rather than by individuals.
Alan Turing, ‘Intelligent Machinery’ (1948)
The British Bombe machine was a decrypting device used during the Second World War to crack the enigma code and decipher German naval messages, developed by Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman from a Polish-designed original. As well as standing as a testament to the power of human intellect and cooperation, the Bombe recalls the immeasurable contributions of Alan Turing: a humanist, mathematician, and a gay man who suffered gravely at the hands of the UK government. The Bombe is today widely considered to have shortened the war and saved numerous lives, and Turing is remembered as a pioneer of computer science.
Turing and his colleagues developed the Bombe while working at Bletchley Park – the top-secret centre of codebreaking in Britain. The first Bombe, operational from March 1940, was named Victory, but by the end of the war there were 211 bombe machines, deployed by nearly 2000 men and women. The development, fine-tuning, and operation of the bombe machine was a remarkable collective effort, and Turing himself was ever aware of the paramount importance of collaborative work. In an article written years on from his work at Bletchley Park, he expressed his belief that in science and discovery ‘the search for new techniques must be regarded as carried out by the human community as a whole, rather than by individuals’. This ideal of working collectively for the benefit of all is a deeply humanist one.
Five Facts You Need to Know about Bombe Machines| Google Arts & Culture
Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges (2012)