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> Without Bletchley Park and the massive advances in electromechanical computing that Turing helped to spearhead, the world would probably look very different t
by pavelrub 7y ago
> Without Bletchley Park and the massive advances in electromechanical computing that Turing helped to spearhead, the world would probably look very different today.
That's an unnecessary exaggeration. ULTRA was incredibly helpful to the Allies, but there is little reason to believe that without it the world "would probably look very different today". In all likelihood the worst scenario is that the war would've ended a bit later, and with somewhat more favourable conditions for the USSR in terms of their positions in Europe.
- onei 7y agoIf I recall, ULTRA played a non-trivial part in the Dunkirk landings by checking what the Nazis actually knew. Without that intelligence, it may not have succeeded and things could indeed look very different today. Moving on from that, one of the people behind ULTRA went on to develop what we would recognise today as the cloud. In terms of cryptography, ULTRA was classified for decades after as the techniques developed were still in use.