[3614] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: [aaa-list] Tommy Flowers, Engineer who cracked German communications, dead, at, 92
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Gillogly)
Tue Nov 10 23:42:30 1998
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 16:25:19 -0800
From: Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>
Reply-To: jim@acm.org
To: aaa-list@lists.netlink.co.uk, DC-Stuff <dc-stuff@dis.org>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
BlueFlux writes:
> If this refers to the ENIGMA codes used by the germans, im curious.
It doesn't, but it's still worth being curious about.
> According to my material, it was a swedish mathematician who was first to
> break the ENIGMA ciphers.
If you're thinking of the Swedish mathematician Arne Beurling, he broke
the Geheimschreiber teleprinter traffic (in 1940) rather than Enigma.
A small Polish team led by Marian Rejewski had broken the Enigma cipher
much earlier, in 1932, and they handed their break to the British in 1939.
> So, does this article refer to the ENIGMA ciphers
> or some other cipher?
The latter. Tommy Flowers designed Colossus, arguably one of the first
stored-program electronic computers, expressly to attack the Lorenz-built
teleprinter called "tunny" by the British and Schluesselzusatz (SZ 40, SZ 42,
SZ 42a) by the Germans. This post-dated the Enigma attacks.
--
Jim Gillogly
21 Blotmath S.R. 1998, 00:12
12.19.5.12.3, 8 Akbal 16 Zac, Ninth Lord of Night
