Output: how Bletchley Park's bombes worked to break Enigma

Bletchley Park, cryptanalysis and their effect on the Allied victory in World War Two is one of the passions of our publisher James, who took this video while attending the APC Open Day for digital signage and kiosks in September 2011. Here, volunteer tour guide Kathy Mansfield explains how ciphers were broken and the role the electro-mechanical devices called 'bombes' played. She also recounts a number of entertaining anecdotes mustered from her time as a guide, including a charming story about an old couple who, without realising, had both worked at the Park at the same time.
www.bletchleypark.org/ is the site for Bletchley Park, and contains details about how you can support this amazing part of British heritage and world history. If you want to learn about the display world (what happens after you've created a design or a campaign), then come and visit us at www.outputmagazine.com, or check out the rest of our stream for informative videos!

[@MrPants1970]

Love how she is explaining and pointing things out and the camera is looking at the audience, lol, brilliant!

[@Bianchi77]

Nice info, thanks :)

[@nimamaster6128]

It takes a beefy tall closet sized machine to crack a small box that fits on a table. This makes me admire the genius behind enigma machine even more!

[@johnduffield67]

This is looking at the wonderful 'bombes' the wrong way round, and actually they 'only' gave the cryptoanalists the 'key' to get INTO the code, and didn't just give a plain text. It is massively more difficult to build a machine to break a relatively simple machine like Enigma. The German arrogance in believing that their tactical Enigma or much more complicated strategic Lorenz machines effectively lost them the war. The bombes, Eniac and the utter genius of the scientists, codebreakers, the engineers who did this work defeated this arrogant dependence on the enemies cleverness.

[@johnduffield67]

Brainfade on my part-I said ENIAC which I'd just been reading about, where I MEANT COLOSSUS! So sorry.....

[@gowdsake7103]

Really I dont know how she could talk for so long without really giving any clue about about that amazing machine did what it did

[@hxhdfjifzirstc894]

It's right there in the word she.

[@vernonwalker6965]

Well as someone who has operated the TypeX cryptographic machine I would say it is a most difficult process to explain in a short period .

[@SteelHex]

The lawn mower noise is so annoying...

[@mattm7503]

leaf blower bruh get you lawn equipment right

[@tomr6955]

@@mattm7503 Dang right

[@gulparviz]

3:50 the guy reads the massage in German and the subtitle says "I enjoyed myself" lol

[@fritsvanzanten3573]

6:50 "the chicken room"

[@beakytwitch7905]

Nope. Not even auto-captions could hear her. :-(.... The official secrets are thus preserved... ;-P

[@michaelhawthorne8696]

That was a lovely story about the woman in the audience saying that she worked at Bletchley and her Husband not knowing anything about it and the fact that her Husband also worked there.... Just a great pointer to both of their level of Integrity in keeping "Mum"..... ❤❤

[@maxschneemann7361]

I think the original German message had been either (in proper German): "Keine besonderen Ereignisse" (with an additionally "n" at "besondere") or even more likely "Keine besonderen Vorkommnisse".

[@peterdaou4720]

man can you explain to me how the cracked the enigma cause i cant find it nowhere maybe u can tell me

[@babayega_]

@@peterdaou4720 they had found enigma machines at war. But he no idea how to set the original settings of each wheel and plug board. So they made educated guesses at which formation it might be for that day and then tried over and over with multiple test set up for the beginning position of the wheels and plugs until it worked and actual words popped out.

[@babayega_]

@@peterdaou4720 watch this video to understand how it works. Then come back to this video and look at the giant setting wheels behind her. Each "3 wheel combo" behind her is actually a replica of the 3 wheels on an enigma and then they have also the plug in section. So this machine made hundreds and thousands of guesses of "start position" until it finally worked. Basically there's about a few hundred of not thousands of enigma machines inside the room at one point as she described. Multiple copies of the same machine that's behind her. So they could try hundreds of different starting positions. Once you have the starting position and the settings of the plug in, you have the answer. But I think it you watch this video link first, it will help you much more clearly understand what the machine behind her is doing.

[@cmillerg6306]

This video doesn't seem to explain it well. I follow most enigma and bletchley park presentations.

[@drinix318]

The born of computer science

[@peterdaou4720]

man can you explain to me how the cracked the enigma cause i cant find it nowhere maybe u can tell me

[@MCFC_EDITZ]

@@peterdaou4720 A letter couldn't become itself so they used that to their advantage. There was a weather report sent out every morning at 6am which always had the words weather report in it. They used them words and matched it up with the encrypted code and if two letters were the same and in the same place then it couldn't fit there. They found a place where it could fit in and they would put it's information into the bombe machine and it would come out with the rotor positions.

[@gowdsake7103]

@@peterdaou4720 Did you even look ? there are hundreds of articles

[@peterdaou4720]

@@gowdsake7103 nika i droppped uni bcz ur 5 month late fk nikas

[@gowdsake7103]

@@peterdaou4720 Do you actually speak English ?

[@kenb3552]

Polish mathematicians were the first to break Enigma - and to use math and machines to break the code. After the Poles got their information out to the Allies just before Poland was invaded, the British improved on the idea as more power was needed after the Germans boosted the code by adding more rotors.

[@johnballantyne3231]

The acoustics of this presentation are terrible, couldn't hear any of it.

[@rk3000100]

we owe it to Polish mathematicians and only they were able to break the enigma code

[@ShinigamiAnger]

yeah sure, but the machine was the real deal, it was such a revolution and it made it possible to crack the code every single day, wich would have been impossible otherwise. THAT was the genius of Alan Turing, and we owe him too, his legacy is still alive in a certain way, in our every day lives.

[@viisteist1363]

@@ShinigamiAnger its actually really good that you dont have to prove anything on the internet, so u can just keep repeating the same exact bullshit over and over again until noone even remembers what the word proof means

[@ShinigamiAnger]

@@viisteist1363 what bullshit are you talking about? That is just your opinion, what I wrote has been proved, it's history, maybe you want to study this subject more before randomly attacking people. I don't get why you are so mad by the way, I'm not diminishing the work of either, you on the other hand, seem to be a fanboy of one and only one faction, for whatever reason.

[@viisteist1363]

@@ShinigamiAnger so you are a fanboy of attacking other people without any proof whatsoever? what a fucking surprise aka "beauty" of the shiternet

[@normanedwards7220]

The polish were the thebasement of cracking the code , and we can not under estimate their input , but we need to put things in to perspective, the code breakers at Bletchley did unbelievable work , I do not in any way undermine what the Polish achieved, please give Bletchley the same respect

[@charlesmiller000]

Bored watcher.

[@fritsvanzanten3573]

This only becomes interesting at a certain level of involvement. The focus of many people is in the machines 'cracking' the code, but the machines weren't capable of doing that with human thinking, resulting in those 'menus' saving the machine most of the (infinite) work they'd have to do. The code could only be cracked by German operators ignoring the safety instructions, spies gathering information and the 'stealing' some codebooks (which took some sailor their lives). With all the praise for the machine, the human factor was indispensable. An important lesson in the thoughtless admiration for AI.

[@peterdaou4720]

@@fritsvanzanten3573 man can you explain to me how the cracked the enigma cause i cant find it nowhere maybe u can tell me

[@Enigma758]

@@peterdaou4720 The wikipedia entry is a good place to start. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe

[@peterdaou4720]

@@Enigma758 i dropped out cause of your late reply thank you ❤️

[@babayega_]

@@peterdaou4720 here is your answer kzbin.info/www/bejne/jGW5Y5Wmj9Gkrpo

[@iphuqdyrmum]

Its bommmmmmm "bomb"