QI | Who Cracked Enigma?

[@magnusengeseth5060]

I love David Mitchell's face after being told he was right. It looks like he's both very proud of being right, but also his Britishness dictates that he isn't allowed to show said pride in any way. So he ends up starting to smile only to quickly drop the smile and freeze his face for a couple of seconds.

[@watchingaccount]

legit reminds me in school when the smartarses would do the exact same shit. me included ofcofc

[@AllenKnutson]

I'm going to guess that he researched a bunch for History of Numberwang. kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y6OZf4xqgNFrg9U

[@jaysparrow6631]

He known as the teachers pet in certain circles 😅

[@davew4998]

No, he looked like 'I know I'm right Stephen, I don't need to you to tell me that '

[@donsylvester2372]

World's first computer. "They gave it to the CIA." "Oh, superb." Best response ever.

[@monkeytron5061]

Don Sylvester That made me laugh loads too

[@erinnolen8627]

I agree totally !

[@PanglossDr]

Except it wasn't a computer.

[@Friek555]

There are lots of things that some claim to be the first computer. That way, lots of countries can claim to have invented it! :D

[@MrBulky992]

@@PanglossDr What's your definition of a computer? Colossus was fully electronic (except for the clocking mechanism which used the paper tape sprocket holes) and programmable rather than hardwired for its intended use so therefore capable of carrying out computational tasks other than codebreaking. This multi-purpose capability was demonstrated in the final tests prior to commissioning at the end of 1943, precisely because the construction team wanted to demonstrate that they had built what we would now describe as a 'computer'.

[@Gibbles432]

Talking to David Mitchell about WWII seems like a cool way to spend a few hours.

[@1919georgekelly]

I think it would be horrific spending a few hours in the company of that bore.

[@BlueFury2577]

Well then you'd be wrong ^^

[@2109917162]

You know as dickish of a comment that is, I think to some extent David would agree with you. He is very pragmatic and he would argue that by definition he is boring. Don't get happy though your still a dick.

[@fallartifact8904]

Daryl?

[@vagabondwastrel2361]

It depends how much you enjoy sarcasm.

[@gerdforster883]

The best part of the story is how the Poles got their hands on the Enigma. The german government mailed one with the normal Postal Service to their embassy in Warsaw a few weeks before the war started. The guy in the post office in Warsaw decided - on a hunch - to delay the pick-up of the parcel over the weekend (basically because the guy that wanted to pick it up seemed way too eager to him). He informed military intelligence and they took the machine apart, documented it and put it back together, all in one weekend.

[@48sydney]

That's really interesting. I think Polish are quite smart.

[@gerdforster883]

@@48sydney At least smarter than German diplomats.

[@malahammer]

@@gerdforster883 They needed to be, being constantly attacked from the East and the West!

[@tombowen826]

Complete bullshit, but harmless so who cares?

@@48sydney You could go to the London patent office and examine the commercial enigma machine.

[@1969Kismet]

"Oh superb!" perfect!

[@1969Kismet]

;)

[@lizsheridan5025]

Jani Pestana b

[@Lumibear.]

Our top brass has a long history of this, as strangely enough, in a class system when you’re the ruling class who has everything you could ever want, you don’t have much motivation or interest in change. Eg. They didn’t give Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the word wide web, any recognition for his world changing invention until the early stages of social media pressured them to (invented in 1989, knighted in 2004).

[@davidjongen1022]

One famous method of cracking Enigma was recording messages on Hitler's birthday. Every operator basically sent ... Happy Birthday ... all on the same day ...

[@diabl2master]

4/20 lmao blaze it

[@WaterCrane]

The other word they look out for is "wetterbericht", I believe. Basically the daily weather report. What helped is that the Enigma had a flaw in its design in that a letter wouldn't be encrypted into itself, so a plaintext T would never become a ciphertext T. With that knowledge, you can find potential positions when placing "wetterbericht" against the ciphertext. An early version of the "known plaintext attack".

[@eddiebarrett844]

@@WaterCrane There is a fantastic video here kzbin.info/www/bejne/jGW5Y5Wmj9Gkrpo describing the flaw (human error). Well worth a view.

[@phililpb]

Gordon Welchman was the man who worked on these quirks looking for patterns and repeated phrases whilst Turing worked mathematical side. It was very much a team effort. The volume of traffic was also monitored to identify areas of importance. Very clever stuff indeed

[@martinborgen]

@@WaterCrane Yes, but only with regards to the weather-stations (for other traffic, the word 'wetterbericht' was just one among others). Basically, you would be pretty sure that one or more weather-stations would send the word more, and the requirement for frequent weather-reports made it a good choice. But any other word could be 'searched' for, if you knew what subject a particular sender was reporting on.

[@matti8621]

"Give them what they want" - Winston Churchill. You know you're onto something when you're told that you have no budget limit for your project.

[@thetooginator153]

Matti - Exactly what I was thinking. Churchill was pretty good at understanding priorities. I’m sure Churchill was thinking about the value of British encryption to the war effort, and how bad it would be if the Germans could read every bit of sensitive communication (which was entirely possible). The brutal part of this is that it was vital that the Germans think that their communications were secure, so the secrecy at Bletchley Park was extremely serious. Bletchley Park employed many women, and I read that they were all told that if they discussed their work with ANYONE, they would be executed immediately. I assume the wages were pretty good...

[@MrSpruce]

Quoting, "ACTION THIS DAY Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this has been done."

[@countiblis1246]

Words are cheap though. One of the engineers and main designer of Colossus (a complete genius and unsung hero) Tommy Flowers had to use his own money that he'd saved up whilst working for the Post Office to build the fucking thing. As Eisenhower said, it probably shortened the war by 2 years and for that the government grudgingly gave back Flowers £1000 of the money he'd put in. Being the gent he was he then split the cash with the rest of his team.

[@danieldravot341]

Churchill was presented with unique responsibilities with the breaking of Enigma. It was learned, through the broken code, that the Lutfwaffe was going to carry out a full-on raid of Coventry. Churchill was faced with the choice of scrambling the RAF to defend Coventry, thus showing their hand to the Germans, or to let the Germans through to destroy the city, in order to protect the code. Churchill made the tough decision and he allowed the raid to proceed without extraordinary RAF intercession, thus keeping the secret of Enigma a secret.

[@karlhrdylicka]

@@countiblis1246 ,Thank you , took ages reading through comments before someone who knows the truth about ;Tommy Flowers; is even mentioned, Tommy didn't design and build Colossus single handed , but was the man who built a small a underfunded group that had the dedication and knowledge that valves could do the switching and selecting needed to build what is actually the worlds first electronic programmable computer , Thanks Tommy and all of your team .

[@HugeOB]

That's Numberwang

[@bbb462cid]

well played

[@acxezknightnite1377]

Hugo De Bouvre LOL!!

[@Nickelodeon81]

Collosson solved it

[@FergusGriggs]

The world is numberwang, therefore I am the world

[@TheHutchy01]

That's Nurembergwang

[@Davemcfc]

It's fantastic watching the panel just sit and listen to Stephen like children listening to their grandparents fascinating stories

[@sunnyjim1355]

That's because Stephen is the host with all the answers right in his hand. Jeez you are fucking stupid.

[@bellamckinnon8655]

Sunny Jim yikes, what stick did you have up your ass when you replied with that?

[@awalk5177]

Yes, and he is just reading from a SCRIPT.

[@spareumbrella8477]

2:10 Maybe I shouldn't be proud of this, but I'm happy the panelists and the audience had the good sense to not make any sort of jokes during this part. Turing was a giant, and I'm glad he received the respect he so rightly deserves.

[@darthozlord]

I don’t think Stephen would have forgiven them if they did - as a gay man himself turning Turing into a joke would be insulting

[@AgentOccam]

It would have been incredibly insulting. Turing was so poorly treated by the very state, the very society, that he helped immensely. I'm disgusted by his treatment after WW2.

[@matthewjeremy6887]

I will personly murder anyone who insults that man infront of me

[@2HN.]

@@darthozlord that's gei

[@Birdnerd1968]

​@@AgentOccamI agree. I learned about him in a cryptography class in university. I was physically ill at the thought of how he was treated. He helped save countless lives and then the government turned their back on him and shunned him. They used him then threw him away when they thought they didn't need him any more. His death was tragic, as was his treatment leading up to his death. Some conspiracy theories say he didn't do it to himself, that he was poisoned by the government. Who knows for sure. I wonder how much more he could have contributed to mathematics and computing if he were alive. I'm glad they made the movie *The Enigma Code* to give him his recognition.

[@simonj48]

Can we all take a moment to remember Stephen Fry. He's not dead or anything, but he made the show.

[@TheMultiGamerOfficial]

Yet

[@Lumibear.]

@@TheMultiGamerOfficial put the knife down. ;)

[@TheMultiGamerOfficial]

@@Lumibear. I don't wanna.

[@Lumibear.]

@@TheMultiGamerOfficial 😊

[@ShizuruNakatsu]

"Many boffins died to bring us this information."

[@laurabogar3956]

Brilliant!

[@kujobananaro6737]

Diana Cavendish *bothans

[@ShizuruNakatsu]

@@kujobananaro6737 Not in this case.

[@laurabogar3956]

It was a play on words. That was why it was amusing.

[@AlanTaylorCRSmusicproduction]

Ha ha. Best response.

[@jojojorisjhjosef]

So first a Polish man with Jewish resemblance cracked the code, then a homosexual, quite the dream team against the nazi's.

[@ricardlupus]

Yeah, if that doesn't chalk it up for diversity vs. racial purity!

[@ThomasDTank-pr8hy]

Nazis*

[@goostec33]

He wasn't Jewish I'm afraid!

[@wierdalien1]

The Knick jewish _resemblance_

[@goostec33]

Neither that!

[@Gwynbuck]

Colossus was made by Tommy Flowers, a post office engineer who built it, in his spare time, using his own money. It was used to crack the Lorenz cypher, which the Allies called 'Tunny'.

[@mrvolcada5355]

An underrated genius

[@Scaleyback317]

Tommy Flowers could have, should have, been a multi millionaire with the work he was doing. A humble GPO technician he just quietly went about his work and eventually put together what became Colossus. A great unsung hero. I doubt many have even heard of him but without him Turing's work could not have worked.

[@stevelee4952]

Well said. This every day genius should be known by every Brit. Sadly, not the case.

[@stephenhosking7384]

@@Scaleyback317 He was unknown because all who worked at Blechley Park were sworn to secrecy until decades after the war, and their work and the work of Blechley park were kept top secret by the British government. It's worth remembering this because since Turing became famous it's been common to complain that the treatment he received was especially disgraceful because of him being a war "hero". I point out in these conversations that, while the treatment Turing received was reprehensible, that his being a "hero" had nothing to do with it. The police and courts couldn't have known this, and, just like Turing, Tommy Flowers was also a hero who received no recognition until decades later.

[@airl10]

Flowers wasn't some humble everyman, before working on the Colossus, he worked on Enigma decryption machines after Turing requested help from Gordon Radley, Flowers's superior. He then built the Colossus with the help of the 50 man team he headed at the Post Office Research Station and with the support of Radley, the Research Station's director.

[@goostec33]

Yet again Stephen, perfect pronounciation of a polish word! Great effort. Respect! 💪👍👏

[@hellelujahh]

Wrong accent on "Marian" (should be the first syllable), but other than that - really good job! 🙂

[@lmm2103]

He's of polish decent

[@Milnoc]

I've visited Bletchley Park and The Computer Museum next door. Well worth the visit! But do check the schedules, not all of the Computer Museum's exhibits are open every day.

[@delboy4711]

The Museum of Computing is in my opinion much more interesting than Bletchley Park. Book in advance for the guided tour. It costs less than the general admission to Bletchley Park and you will get a much better insight. Bletchley Park downplays the struggle to decode the Lorenz code and the construction of the Colossus computer. They have virtually nothing about it. By contrast at the museum of Computing they have a Colossus complete and working as well as all the other equipment used to collect the signals. It was at the M of C I learned that Alan Turing, genius though he was, in fact had nothing to do with decoding Lorenz and with building Colossus. Stephen Fry was wrong when he said that. It was John Tiltman and Bill Tutte who worked out how Lorenz worked without even having seen a Lorenz machine. And it was Tommy Flowers who designed and built Colossus based on Bill Tuttes deductions. Turing was a great man, and his work on Enigma was immense, but lets not forget those other heroes.

[@bace1000]

François Caron I also visited the museum, and I can't recommend it enough!

[@loodlebop]

François Caron I used to live near it and go to college next to it. although it's fascinating Bletchley itself will give you aids, that's if you're not stabbed first. the place is rough as shit and other than the museum not a place I would recommend visiting

[@cigmorfil4101]

i visited BP years ago when it just starting - in the shop it had one of those "decloaking" mugs (thermo stuff on surface that goes clear when heated) which had an enigma encoded message; the instructions said to visit their Enigma machine which was set up correctly to decode it. Then the bombe was in the first stage of construction with just the case and the enigma dials. When Colossus was rebuilt you could visit it (and the M of C) as part of your entry. I heard about BP guides being told not to visit the Colossus rebuild ans on my last visit there the new entry hall had been built and the N of C was physically cut off from BP into a separate entity. To be blunt I is not happy about what had happened there as Colossus and the breaking of the Lorentz cypher was pretty vital (made all the more remarkable by them creating a machine to do the Lorentz en/deciphering without ever seeing a real one - it was all worked out (by hand) from the intercepted message(s) and then a British machine was modified to the specs).

[@cush6827]

But the cafeteria is quite alright...

[@alfredthegreat9543]

"Give them what they want" gave me goosebumps.

[@milliewarner8911]

Bletchley Park is absolutely breathtaking. It's got such a beautifully important air about it, the history of it is magnificent. I feel very privileged to have been twice.

[@sunnyjim1355]

Sadly now it's a monument to the betrayal of the British people by Socialist fifth columnists... think that's nonsense? Brexit.

[@Scaleyback317]

In my 70's and a former cypher operator - never been to Bletchley. You've prompted me to put it on the, "To do" list.

[@jedisalsohere]

I love this side of QI. You don't see it very often, but it'd great when it does show up.

[@Sundae_Times]

*it's

[@Hz-432Hz]

I honestly think that Stephen Fry is the most interesting person I've ever heard, he knows so much about such a huge range of subjects.

[@trueaussie9230]

And what he doesn't know he reads of the auto cue or has fed to him via his earpiece.

[@itsamindgame9198]

You do know there was an entire team of researchers that both briefed him before the show and fed most of what he was to say into his earpiece, right?

[@adayinthelifeofmyself5513]

Who they didn't mention was Thomas Flowers. An incredible man who actually designed the Colossus.

[@peterfireflylund]

Or Tutte, who figured out how Lorenz/Tunny worked.

[@liamanderson8789]

Franco Martinez shouldn't Tom flowers be the father of computing then?

[@vincenthunter1615]

He deserved to be very much remembered although from what I know he took much more of an engineering role designing the computer rather than actually thinking about the workings of the enigma machine and the super computer. So maybe he should be remembered as the doctor or midwife of computer he wasn't involved in the initial conception but without him the baby may never have been born.

[@MichaelGGarry]

Turing is known as the father of computing for more than just this, he came up with his theoretical "Turing machine" as a paper mental exercise much much earlier, as well as being one of the fathers of AI - hence the still standing Turing test for AI trying to pass itself off as human. His pre-war work also influenced that of von Neumann, the Hungarian working in the USA, who's work we still use today in modern computers with the von Neumann architecture as well as his work and support in statistics with the Monte Carlo Method, which he was an early supporter. Tommy Flowers is sadly overlooked though, possibly because as mentioned he was an engineer rather than a mathematician, not one of the Oxbridge set, but he also paid for the Colossus out of his own pocket iirc, then at the end of the war went back to his job at the Post Office where he tried to convince them that this thing called a "computer" could help them out in massive ways, but wasn't allowed to tell them that he had already built one that basically helped win the bloody war! The UK is so backward at times.

[@jwvandegronden]

Michael Garry ~ That is an awesome piece of history!! Thanks for that backdrop against which this all evolved!

[@TheBassHeavy]

I went to Bletchley Park yesterday for my Birthday... yep, that's the type of 29-year old I am. I agree with Stephen wholeheartedly - It is definitely worth visiting. There is quite a lot to see and all in very beautiful grounds. You get a free audiovisual guide, which is like having an iPhone full of videos, giving you the best information about every site. Of course, it's not for everyone. But, for some of us, it's mindblowing.

[@diabl2master]

One of my fave bits. David had some fantastic gags.

[@EebstertheGreat]

The Enigma machines were actually electro-mechanical ciphers. You would set them by moving three rotors into position (each with letters A-Z printed on them) which each produced simple substitution ciphers and connecting pairs of jacks (each with a letter) on a plugboard, which performed a sort of double-substitution between letters of each pair. The addition of the plugboard forced Polish cryptanalysts to develop electro-mechanical computers to rapidly guess combinations, including the "bomba". The addition of two more rotors from the original three (in common use mostly in the German navy) forced Poland to seek help from the wealthier and stabler UK and France. The UK eventually built the much larger "bombe," and had sufficient personnel to handle the tenfold increase in complexity the new rotors created. The US later developed its own machines on different principles. In total, the final enigma machine had a keyspace of around 1.6×10²⁰, which is to say that there are about that many ways an operator could set it up. But from the standpoint of an eavesdropper, the problem is even harder, since whenever a new model is introduced, you don't know how it is configured, and later models even allowed operators to change the setting of the entry wheel. In practice, machines of that era certainly could not actually make that many guesses, and instead exploited cryptographic weaknesses in the design of the machine. Incredibly, these details were worked out by Polish cryptanalysts long before any had seen (or read a description of) an actual machine.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

A major weakness of the Enigma, even leaving aside poor choice of secret keys, was that partial guesses about the rotors and plugboard would make the ciphertext look less and less random. So you could refine those initial guesses with better and better ones until you had cracked the whole thing. Basically it is telling you “you’re getting warm”. Modern ciphers don’t do that. More details here kzbin.info/www/bejne/iKu6c2iggZqFjpI

[@EebstertheGreat]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 You need to correctly guess the rotor and ring positions to get those partial matches, but yes, the plugboard didn't have enough connections. But there were much bigger problems like reusing keys, using known headers, and sometimes even resending identical messages encrypted with different keys. The fact that a letter could not map to itself was also a critical flaw that the Germans overlooked.

[@WaterCrane]

The biggest cryptographic flaw in Enigma, and I think Lorenz too, is that a plaintext letter can never encrypt to itself, so a T in a ciphertext will never represent an actual T, for example. It might not sound like much, but if you have phrases that are known to appear (e.g. "WETTERBERICHT" was a common one for a weather report) or a consistent formatting of how messages are composed, you can position the word against the ciphertext and work out where it can definitely not appear (due to a letter lining up) and where it could appear. In modern cryptographic terms, this is essentially a "known plaintext attack".

[@LPJack02]

RIP Alan Turing (June 23, 1912 - June 7, 1954), aged 41 You will always be remembered as a legend and a hero.

[@dingopisscreek]

Stephen Fry is fascinating to listen to. QI is full of interesting & humorous facts.

[@toadyfaced]

Is no one else absolutely confounded every time you see Jo's glasses

[@GoodKingMort]

Absolutely terrible glasses 😅

[@johnbull1568]

My favourite description of Turing is '"What you realise when you get to know a genius well,’’ said the veteran Bletchley Park codebreaker Peter Hilton, “is that there is all the difference between a very intelligent person and a genius. With very intelligent people, you talk to them, they come out with an idea, and you say to yourself… I could have had that idea. You never had that feeling with Alan Turing at all. He constantly surprised you with the originality of his thinking. He was marvellous.’’' Hilton was somewhat underplaying his own intelligence there, he was a genius in his own right and was recruited for Bletchley at 18 years old, but Turing was next level genius, truly one of a kind.

[@Mr.Monta77]

John Bull I have that being said to me often. «Oh you bloody genius!»

[@WOTArtyNoobs]

Turing was a Polymath - a genius in more than one field. If only he lived, we would have had far more than the computer. Modern computers operate on the organisational theory that he devised. One of his last projects before he died was working out how cells know what they are supposed to be doing. Every cell in a human being starts with just one egg with all the DNA code in it. As division starts, certain cells know how to become brain cells, whilst others become the heart, the lungs or the intestinal system. Turing was trying to work out how they knew which part of the body these cells were supposed to specialize in. They discovered the structure of DNA the year before he died. DNA is a code and by understanding the code, you can determine what it is telling the cell to do. Turing was after more than just the code. He was also seeking to know why some codes go wrong and make cancer instead of healthy cells. If Turing had lived to a ripe old age, he might have discovered treatments for cancer that actually took decades to uncover.

[@vivienwilliams1538]

Alan Turing spent some of his childhood where I live. St Leonards on Sea, Sussex. We have a plaque. The way post war England repaid him for his contribution in saving hundreds of thousands of lives was infamous.

[@brooksbrooks6805]

wait! so it wasnt Benedict Cumberbatch !?!?!?!?

[@sandrosliske]

Bendydick Cumerspatch

[@Zakkarae]

Ryan Brooks Benefactor CucumberPatch?

[@christianpettersson9014]

BenTheRich ConstableMatch

[@najeyrifai1134]

Bellatrix HamperSnatch

[@celimendez7620]

Beenevicted Plumberwatch

[@thinkingoutloud6741]

“Indeed. I’m already moist.” ROTFL I love Brit humor!

[@sunnyjim1355]

First off, she DANISH. XD And second, she's a feminist...so that comment wasn't meant as a joke, she meant it as an insult. Wake up.

[@phillipridgway8317]

First off, Jo Brand is British, and second it is a style of humour known as sarcasm, so it is meant as a joke and not as an insult. Go back to sleep!!!

[@DerryPope]

Sunny Jim Are you getting her confused with Sandi Toksvig? Easy mistake for an idiot to make.

[@ilikethisnamebetter]

Yes she is English, not Danish.. but she's about as funny as Sandi Toksvig - that's to say, not at all.

[@samreid1769]

Sunny Jim fuck of mate 😂

[@Mishima505]

The Triple X cypher machine used by the British army was based on Enigma. My uncle used one in Malaya in the 1950’s while he was in the Royal Signals.

[@skippymagrue]

I've been to Bletchley and it is fascinating.

[@jansenfukuoka1162]

Henryk Zygalski, Jerzy Różycki and Marian Rejewski first cracked the enigma code, everyone should know that.

[@Gwynbuck]

No mention either of Bill Tutte. This is from Wikipedia: William Thomas "Bill" Tutte OC FRS FRSC (14 May 1917 - 2 May 2002) was a British codebreaker and mathematician. During the Second World War, he made a brilliant and fundamental advance in cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Tutte's breaking of the Lorenz code has been called the greatest intellectual achievement of the second world war.

[@keithlillis7962]

Actually, an engineer called Tommy Flowers and his team built the Colossus computer at Bletchley Park, which was the first programmable computer as far as I know and contained 1000 values. It is a sad fact that Mr Flowers rarely gets a mention.

[@songcramp66]

The Z3 was built in Germany at least 2 years before the Colossus and not even a year after the Americans built ENIAC which was far superior but Colossus' contribution to the war and especially Turing's theories on computers were unequivocal.

[@gabriel-dx9hw]

“oh superb” this made me laugh out loud

[@johndaugherty7465]

Very good, not many realize it was the Polish who cracked the basics of the enigma.

[@pphyjynx8217]

well, pre-1939 enigma anyway.

[@Sanderus]

The methods used by Poles were still valid after the break out of the war. And Poles were the first ones to crack the code after the the war began. BP created and updated version of so called Zygalski sheets (invented by a Polish cryptoanalyst Henryk Zygalski) according to Polish documentation which Polish Cypher Bureau handed over to the British. However the British were stuck, they couldn't do it. They thought that the method was rendered useless by another modification of Enigma. Indeed another modification was made but the method was still valid. Alan Turing visited Marian Rejewski in Paris carrying the sheets. And Rejewski discovered what changes were made and broke the code.

[@Avignon_Pope]

@@pphyjynx8217 "well, anyway" you like it or not, they did it and you have to deal with it.

[@NxDoyle]

I looked at David's shirt, and immediately thought, "I'll bet he's started going out with Victoria and she got him that very un-David-like shirt".

[@Jamie-gs3yp]

It's so noteworthy though as to be not noteworthy.

[@statosphereonline2008]

It makes him look handsome, like a policeman. Good thing he doesn't have chairman Mao on his shirt, though. He was responsible for the deaths of 60 million people.

[@pudsrus2]

I could listen to Stephen Fry all day.

[@48sydney]

He's only reading a script. He did good Audio books of the Harry Potter series.

[@davebarrowcliffe1289]

Extraordinarily well-kept secret. Nobody spilled the beans about British decrypts until the information was declassified in 1974.

[@atomic7680]

The invention of the computer truly changed our life. Who would have thought these weird large metal mechanic parts and lightbulbs would be developed so far. So far, that we now have these small devices with greater processing power than rooms full of hardware, available in everyone's pocket. Truly astonishing

[@saoirsedeltufo7436]

QI is very funny and has some excellent comedians on, but some of its best moments are the most poignant

[@velkanzi]

Thank you for sharing this really interesting discussion.

[@JoeBleasdaleReal]

Whenever David Mitchell talks about history I half expect it to cut to his inner monologue

[@akatizzle1585]

I'm doing it, Dad, I'm studying Ancient History and there's not a thing you can do

[@WOTArtyNoobs]

One of my great Aunts worked with Turing at Bletchley. She was a exceptional mathematician at Cambridge and Turing brought her in to work on the project. After the war, instead of staying in mathematics, she trained to be a doctor and was a specialist in that too. I remember going to her birthday party when she was in her late nineties. They had to hire a huge hall as there were so many children in the family. She didn't get much official recognition for her work on the Ultra Secret, but after the story was disclosed in the Eighties, Aunt Bonnie (as we called her) told all of us about the part she played. She was far more proud of the work she did as a doctor.

[@tomekstec981]

I currently live in the building where Marian Rejewski lived.

[@darrellpowell6042]

Truly mesmerizing British history.

[@xornxenophon3652]

That is an easy one. It was Mr. E. Nigma, later on known as the riddler.

[@schusterlehrling]

Mrs. Enigma, actually. A bit of classic education would be useful.

[@hebl47]

@@schusterlehrling While some classic education is indeed useful, it doesn't hurt to also know a bit of modern (20th century) culture. So that you can get the reference to the Batman comics.

[@MrSpruce]

@@schusterlehrling It's interesting to see you miss the mark.

[@bredrick.]

@@schusterlehrling Nope, it was quite clearly Edward Nygma.

[@schusterlehrling]

@@hebl47 you should know the classical foundations, not the comic book education. Or you mistake wrong with right and men with women like here.

[@Dazzletoad]

'Indeed, I'm already moist.' I just nearly spat my tea up the wall hearing that xD

[@sunnyjim1355]

So you found a blatantly misandric comment funny. Well done you, bigot.

[@andrewbarrow3466]

Enigma had a flaw, an 'Achilles heel'. No letter was ever encrypted by the machine as itself, so whatever the letter was in the encrypted text, the cryptographers knew that it was not that letter in the plain text. This knowledge was, apparently, immensely important.

[@rin_etoware_2989]

James Grime over on Numberphile demonstrated the flaw wonderfully. but in short, it meant that: - you could use a regularly-broadcasted phrase (like "shippingforecast"), - align it next to some portion of the encrypted text (like "waicamszuoepaewq"), - and if any of the letters match up between the two (which is true in this example), that encrypted portion will NEVER translate to the regularly-broadcasted phrase, and you just saved a fair bit of time and computing power.

[@fritsvanzanten3573]

3:56 'these people' (about 10.000!) working in Bletchley Park were mainly women, that after the war were sent back to 'their' kitchens and since it was kept secret never got any recognition for what they did.

[@tarjei99]

The Geheimschreiber was also broken by the Swedes. The comunication lines from Norway passed through Sweden.

[@Nexus42]

The Swedish actually did plenty of things during the war, but specifically avoided the whole killing aspect of it. They took in tons of refugees from neighbouring countries and helped them out a bunch, but of course kept it all under wraps.

[@DomWeasel]

Not sure selling all that iron ore to the Germans who turned it into war materiel specifically avoided the 'killing aspect' of it.

[@Nexus42]

Direct participation in the war effort then. If they hadn't sold the iron, the Germans would've probably just taken it by force anyway.

[@Cronuz2]

This conversation led me to read about sweeden during the war. And im quite amazed by the good work sweeden did to stop nazi germany.

[@razzledazzle7776]

Shadownet Spy without the 'killing aspect' them refugees would be dead along with Sweden being invaded.

[@imamoronand9199]

2:40, “it isn’t true, but god we wish it were”. If you’ve ever wondered what the subjunctive is, his use of “were” instead of “was” there, is a perfect example of it

[@birdvideos9085]

Brilliant observation!

[@BedsitBob]

The person who actually came up with the idea for COLOSSUS, was a Post Office engineer, called Tommy Flowers.

[@professornuke7562]

Turing's machine, Bombe was, I believe made on the back of what the Poles did, and was a bunch of wheels. Tommy Flowers came up with his design out of his own head, and had to fund a lot of it out of his own pocket.

[@BedsitBob]

@@professornuke7562 He had to fund *all* of it, out of his own pocket. After the war, he was awarded £1,000, which barely covered the money he spent on building it.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Bombe was part of a different project from Colossus. Read Gordon Welchman’s _The Hut 6 Story_ for more about that.

[@hughtierneytierney3585]

Colossus was built to break the Lorenz cypher; something entirely different from the enigma code.

[@bmac8993]

Think Tommy flowers was shown the bombe and said straight off that he could build better. Think he managed that alright.

[@notlikely4468]

What a lot of people don't "seem" to realize Is that you don't crack a code like enigma You have to crack it every time it changes You need a "process" The UBoat codes (rotors and their starting positions) which were the ones most associated with Benchly Park, changed every night at midnight So at midnight the code breakers had to start their process They had a few hints UBoats sent in standardized weather reports If there was a ship in that area (so you had to triangulate the position sent) they could request the same information in that format And that "might" give you 3 to 10 pairs (b is t and L is r) then you applied the basic code breaking strategies (single letters are I or A) And by elimination, every pair you coupled reduced the variables for the other pairs Eventually you loaded it all into the "Bombe(s)" (the computer) and let it crunch out the remainder of the pairs Some days they had the code by 9am And some days they never got it But...at midnight...you started all over again The diplomatic rotors were changed weekly And some military admin rotors only changed monthly So those were also cracked...but were lower priority And once cracked you could still use the information sent a day or so ago And those almost always signed off "Hiel Hitler" Which gave you your first pairings

[@Sundae_Times]

I bet you're a hoot at dinner parties.

[@vaibhavbijapur6037]

such an informative show with comedy wow!

[@dgw1970]

I'm so proud to be Head of Computer Science at Sherborne School where Turing went to school.

[@Finsternis..]

So, what did you teach the man?

[@dgw1970]

@@Finsternis.. um... I'd need to be very very old now if I'd taught him.

[@Finsternis..]

@@dgw1970 So what are you proud about?

[@jewpacabra1905]

The Poles broke the actual code itself- they wore out the maths for it, they created the machines to break it, all of it. But when the germans improved the code, they simply added more variations- the principle of how it worked, how to brake it, etc was the same- it only took longer to decode and needed new bigger machines build to adjust, which the Polish guys already knew how to do- only by then Poland was being overrun by Germans and Russians, so they didn't have the finances nor especially the security to do so themself. They literally met with Turing, in fact, thought him how the code worked and how to break it, give him the machine they used (called bomba- even back then) and explained how he needs to improve on it to build the new one. He deserves credit for the actual work he has done with carrying it out and capturing and providing the invaluable intelligence for the war effort- but as far as the science of it goes, he didn't actually do any of the heavy lifting.

[@mandolinic]

That's unfair to Turing. The system that the Poles used relied on a "mistake" in the Germans' coding protocol. The signaller had to create a "unique" 3 letter message key and use the daily key to send it at the start of the message. However, the protocol was to send it twice - that was the mistake. The Poles and the British used this redundancy to break the system. But eventually the Germans changed the system so the key was only sent once. It was Turing who broke this new system; he realised that the Enigma could never code a letter to itself, so if there was a "crib" (such as the standard text that appeared in every weather forecast) it was possible to guess where this might appear in the message, and then use the new style bombes he designed to determine the rotor settings. Once the first message was cracked, the rest of the day's stuff was open. That is all down to Turing, but of course it was only possible because the British used the Poles' work to create a massive library of prior messages so knew what to look for. It really helped that the Germans sent a stereotypical weather forecast every morning!

[@ilikethisnamebetter]

This might have been said before.. although Alan Turing did make a huge contribution at Bletchley Park, there were several other brilliant people who made great breakthroughs too - Turing had nothing to do with the actual design of the Colossus computer, for example.

[@ricklangley3438]

Alan Turing wasn't directly involved with inventing Colossus. That was Tommy Flowers. Turing was in America by that stage of the war.

[@jamesj.7866]

the story behind them giving the details to the US is pretty interesting, kinda shows the real extant of the 'special relationship.'

[@joeturner1597]

I think that this is the most somber segment of any QI episode. Irony is most evidently evoked but there are no cheap shots at humour.

[@Knappa22]

I do love Jo’s specs

[@michaelstrunk6058]

When the Nazis found out that the Enigma was calculated that had to add 2 more rotors to the machine. The first computer or 2 computers had 19kb of memory each to work with during World War 2.

[@schusterlehrling]

That was also cracked within a few weeks.

[@chrisbodum3621]

windows or mac ?

[@Thurgosh_OG]

@@chrisbodum3621 ZX Spectrum

[@sanuspg]

One of those shows which restore my faith in humanity.

[@alansmithee419]

"Not named after your dog surely?" *awkward laugh* We've got 'im boys...

[@TimberwolfC14]

I may be completely wrong but I understood that the first message from German High Command was a weather report so the Allies knew the weather conditions and could then workout the settings from that.

[@thehellyousay]

I learned something new about something old, today.

[@elmaoik]

That made me really emotional

[@pinkponyofprey1965]

It was actually one of the largest Poles alive at the time who did the very last bit, but it was a man from Madagascar who never got the proper credit for his achievements. He thought to himself "Hmmm ... what if ... I touch that damn enigma with a ten foot Pole?"

[@karlbassett8485]

I agree with Stephen that Bletchley Park is well worth a visit, and the tickets are a bit pricey but last a year, so you can go back for free again and again if you want. But..... Take snacks and drinks, or stop at a cafe just before you get there. The prices in the tea rooms around Bletchley Park are shocking. I bought two cups of tea, ordinary tea, served in big paper disposable cups, in the tea room next to the main building, and they cost £5.40. For two cups of tea.

[@nb2866]

I was so sure Alan Davies was going to buzz and say Alan Turing. Pleasantly surprised.

[@Karma-qt4ji]

The most amazing thing about this clip is that David Mitchell knows what a ZX-80 is bwahahahaha

[@michaelt3798]

Love stephen fry

[@bbb462cid]

good book on the subject- Seizing the Enigma

[@Bialy_1]

"Up to July 25, 1939, the Poles had been breaking Enigma messages for over six and a half years without telling their French and British allies. On December 15, 1938, two new rotors, IV and V, were introduced (three of the now five rotors being selected for use in the machine at a time). As Rejewski wrote in a 1979 critique of appendix 1, volume 1 (1979), of the official history of British Intelligence in the Second World War, "we quickly found the [wirings] within the [new rotors], but [their] introduction [...] raised the number of possible sequences of drums from 6 to 60 [...] and hence also raised tenfold the work of finding the keys. Thus the change was not qualitative but quantitative. We would have had to markedly increase the personnel to operate the bombs, to produce the perforated sheets (60 series of 26 sheets each were now needed, whereas up to the meeting on July 25, 1939, we had only two such series ready) and to manipulate the sheets."" Polish did not care about German Navy enigma because Poland at the time got only 50km of coast and from both side of that coast we got Germans... But because of that it is good reason to brag how "we broke the most important part of the code"... The reality is that there was no significal German navy battle during this whole long war ... And in the topic of U-boats it was much more important that Polish engineer Wacław Struszyński was able to create antena reliable that was also small enough to fit it on a ship and thanks to that German u-boats was located by Allied ships when ever they were making any transmision. Germans to the end was thinking that it will be not posible to build antena like that(just like in case of cracking enigma). btw. the one significant battle with Bismarck was posible thanks to Polish destroyer ORP Piorun that found it and made first shots at him(but in British sources we can read that all shots was a miss, funy how British know that even when Polish sailors claiming that only first salvo was a miss...). If you want to learn real history then start with Polish book as first 13 years was done only by Polish, French and British was not even trying as they considered the job imposible until Polish invited them to Poland to show them what we have...

[@chattycathydoll]

It's a shame there is no mention of Gordon Welchman. Without his involvement is increasing the speed of calculations of the code breaking machine, Enigma may never have been cracked. A genius and fellow student alongside Turing he too was hounded by the powers that be when years later he tried to publish a book about his work at Bletchley. It led to his loss of security clearance and role with the NSA and he was almost prosecuted under the same legislation as Snowden. Perhaps you could consider a revisit of this segment to shine a light on his achievements and prevent him being sidelined?

[@Andyww08]

Turing had nothing to do with Colossus . It was Bill Tutte that worked how the Lorenze SZ20 worked , and Tommy Flowers designed and built Colossus

[@howardchambers9679]

One of the greatest things about being British is that we can belittle ourselves whilst quietly punching way above our weight.

[@bbb462cid]

all the while being modest, I see

[@rudie2902]

The Colossus project waa managed by Max Newman and the (valve) electronics by Tommy Flowers. Turing was not involved in the Colossus project. Turing worked with a mechanical computer called Bombe to decrypt the enigma code.

[@ExeDist]

No one ever mentions Tommy Flowers who designed and built Collosus

[@sam_marley]

Oh superb.

[@jac627]

I see jo brand used her repertory of joke "I'm already moist" she's so funny.

[@jac627]

@@lotuspotus2213 Her face looks like someone's already had a go.

[@RobRidleyLive]

I always thought it was Dougray Scott. No mention of Turing at all in that version of the story. Technically that makes it Turing Incomplete.

[@kilroy1963]

No mention of Tommy flowers who built that computer

[@mungolikescandy3270]

its a shame, he designed and made the first electronic computer and he got a mbe, a adult education centre (now closed) and a road named after him. he tried to get a loan to build another computer after the war but the bank didn't believe such a machine could work

[@BedsitBob]

Yes indeed, no mention of him. The road around the place where Alan Turing was born, is named after him, but the road around where Tommy Flowers was born, is called the M25.

[@styot]

When he was going for that loan I bet he couldn't tell them about the computer he already built because it was classified!

[@lycian123]

He worked at Dollis Hill Research for the then Post Office before a new centre was built at Adastral Park (originally known simply as 'Martlesham') by BT (then British Telecom). They have a bronze bust of him there which you cannot miss when you go into the staff restaurant building.

[@hanstun1]

Lots of things named after him including a street. He also lived a long and full life and seems to have been a pretty normal and well adjusted guy. In other words not great material for imagination and inspiration no matter how important he might have been. Turing on the other hand ....

[@GotWrackspurts]

3:09 woah wtf??? Turing did not build colossus. Tommy Flowers. Tommy Flowers was essentially laughed out bletchley park for his solution to solve to Lorenz cypher, and then built Colossus with a team at dollis hill

[@calvin624]

Yeah the bite out of the apple is just there to distinguish it from a cherry.

[@Garomation]

I went to that statue 2 weeks ago and KZbin recommended this video.

[@adamsmithintin2803]

If you had your phone with you then there's data somewhere that knows you were there

[@jasevt1476]

0:12 could have endes it right there

[@whizzo94]

I think they forgot to mention Tommy Flowers, the GPO engineer who's idea it was to use valves instead of relays to build the computer. I think his contribution is overshadowed by Alan Turing.

[@KishoreShenoy1994]

Numberphile have made a video about the engima code

[@acxezknightnite1377]

Kishore Shenoy I’ve seen it and was fascinated. I love numberphile.

[@dacramac3487]

Computerphile have a whole series on Bletchley Park (Enigma and Colossus) with Professor David Brailsford. It is really good, you get a better understanding of what was going on.

[@MilesBellas]

Fry asked Woz : this is why Fry is so epic.

[@whi5tler_1337]

God bless Tommy Flowers, he built the dam thing and never gets a mention. And while I'm here God bless Bill Tutt and who cracked Tunny.

[@rosiefay7283]

The TUNNY cipher is also known as Lorenz. and btw William Tutte (with an e).

[@kasiorexg4806]

And god bless the Polish who really cracked the code and nether Tommy flowers or Alan Turing would have gotten anywhere without

[@nikos327]

@@rosiefay7283 I'm going to be a little pedantic here - Lorenz was the German name for their High Command Cipher system. TUNNY was the covername that the British code crackers gave to the intercepted cipher created by a Lorenz machine.

[@MrBITS101]

3:09 i might be wrong but i believe what Turing and his Bletchley team built was the first "programmable" computer. The Germans and US army had tabulating machines/computers? for plotting artillery or naval gunfire.

[@dlarge6502]

Colossus was the first computer, beyond Charles Babbages fully mechanical difference engine and his analytical engine and beat the US ENIAC by a couple of years, the US had no idea that Colossus ever existed so ENIAC went in the history books as the first. ENIAC was the first fully electronic computer, Colossus did have some mechanical parts. Colossus also wasn't programmable, it was designed specifically to crack Lorenz. Thanks to Turing's papers and his later work in Manchester there were lots and lots of "first computer to" examples. The Manchester baby was the first electronic stored program computer. The thing is, it's very hard to really pin things like this down because if you change the criteria slightly, the ENIAC can be seen to be the first stored program computer because it was given a few modifications, but it only beat the Manchester Baby by a matter of weeks and you have to accept the ENIACS method of storing the program, which is different from the Baby, which was the first to use electronic memory for the program. The Baby was merely a prototype, a test bed for the first type of electronic RAM. It was quickly developed into the Manchester Mk 1, then into the Ferranti Mk 1 which became the Leo 1. The first computer purchased by a private company for use in the business. It was named the Leo 1 due to it being commissioned by Lyons in the UK, it made world news, the first computer to be used by a business for inventory, salary calculations, anything.

[@Anairofdeath]

alan turing....the new face of the £50 note.....well played sir.....well played

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

We've got a ZX-80 on it, that one cracked me up LOL. For those who were born too late: the ZX-80 was a 1 MHz 8 bit computer with 1,024 bytes of RAM.

[@MyLateralThawts]

You crack it, you bought it!

[@geoffgeoff143]

The movie is fantastic

[@TheLuca777]

Finally Poles are getting recognition they deserve. Polish people never gave up! Just look at history. Well done Poles!

[@kasiorexg4806]

TheLuca777 THANK YOU THATS WHAT IVE TRIED TO SAY EVERYWHERE

[@captainscarlet6758]

The film was brilliant.