h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi there :-) The Enigma entry would fit nicely into this project, wouldn't it? It's up for Peer Review at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F48874?thread=132016 but this wouldn't be necessary any more if the entry was included into the project. Bossel

Hi, I'm the author of the above named piece, if you would like to use it, (or any part of it) just let me know, I'd be pleased to help in any way I can

Whisky

PS, how about a bit of history, I'm not the worlds greatest mathemetician but I'm sure I could knock something up about the background of the various agencies involved in cryptanalysis, NSA, GCHQ, DSD (Australia, CSE (Canada) etc.
I don't know if this would fall within the scope of your project, but the offer is there if you would like.

Whisky

PS, how about a bit of history, I'm not the worlds greatest mathemetician but I'm sure I could knock something up about the background of the various agencies involved in cryptanalysis, NSA, GCHQ, DSD (Australia, CSE (Canada) etc.
I don't know if this would fall within the scope of your project, but the offer is there if you would like.

Whisky

Whiskey,

What a splendid idea, I'd be delighted to add a piece on the origin of the cryptology agencies into the project. That would be wonderful.

I have taken a quick look at your piece in PR, it's rather well written

One thing I noticed, you state that the development of the modern computer began with the attempt to break the Enigma cipher, it took me a long time to get to the bottom of this myself but Tony Sale at Bletchley was kind enough to send me a copy of his book on Colossus. The Colossus was designed to reproduce the pseudorandom sequence of the Lorenz cipher machine, a later type than Enigma, the tools used to break Enigma varied somewhat but the 'famous' one is the 'Bombe' designed by Alan Turing.

Just to add confusion, early Polish efforts to break Enigma used a bombe as well but that describes a completely different machine!

Many thanks for the offer, I'll trawl your Enigma post and mercilessly plagiarise anything I find

Cheers,

Cestus

Ok, I'll stick my hands up and admit that the last phrase in the article was written without a lot of thought going into it, It was three in the morning and I just needed a conclusion

As to the history lesson, I'm going on holiday for a couple of weeks, but I should be able to let u have something around mid september. That's not too long is it?

I've added you under 'Contributing Researchers'. I'm going to steal your operational description if that's OK?

I think September might be a little late for this one. It's a piece that ought to be in the guide somewhere though, if you get round to doing it when you get back let me know, I'd love to see it.

Cheers,

Cestus

No problem, pinch whatever you like. I'll see if i can do a bit of research next week for the article, but I can't promise anything just yet.

i read hugh sebag montifiore's book recently - good on history but wooly on the maths. stresses the role of military captures

here are a couple of links, 1st is a turing machine (reminds me of john conway's life)

http://wwwsys.informatik.fh-wiesbaden.de/weber1/turing/tm.html

second is an enigma machine - works great although there are probably flashier versions available

http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~russell/classes/enigma/