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Agree with your main final point, but not the billionaire bit... Why not give the billion to British immigrant Marian Rejewski and his Polish intelligence serv

by gregw2 2y ago

Agree with your main final point, but not the billionaire bit... Why not give the billion to British immigrant Marian Rejewski and his Polish intelligence service peers and leaders who actually cracked Enigma, fled Poland, and gave their findings to the British (and French) as their home country was being taken over? https://daily.jstor.org/polish-codebreakers/ https://daily.jstor.org/polish-codebreakers/ https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/polish-mathematicians-role-in-cracking-germans-wwii-codesystem.html https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/polish-mathematici...

Detrytus 2y ago
Exactly. There are few good reasons to call Alan Turing a genius, but breaking Enigma definitely isn't one of them.
- matthewdgreen 2y ago
  There is no single “Enigma”. There were several variations of the Enigma with increasing amounts of complexity, and changing key management practices. Trying to hand credit for “the break” to one group is like trying to credit one chef for devising all gourmet cuisine.
  - Detrytus 2y ago
    Well, trying to credit Turing alone is what frustrates me the most. To add some context: 1. In Rejewski's own words, all variations of the Enigma were "quantitive, not qualitive" - adding more rotors, changing them more frequently made the decryption more labor-intensive, but they did not change the main principle on which it worked, and Rejewski's team was able to figure those out pretty quickly, even before the war. 2. Rejewski, Zygalski, Rozycki they did not just disappear in September 1939, they continued their work, first in France, and then in Britain. Turing actually went to France in early 1940 to consult with them. 3. The main advantage that British "bomb" had over earlier Polish design came from improvement suggested not by Turing, but by Gordon Welchman.
    - matthewdgreen 2y ago
      1) “Quantity is its own quality” when it comes to ciphers. We can break many reduced-round ciphers easily but have no practical attack on the full version. This is not always true but it is close enough (even today) that nobody should mistake the impact of additional rotors as being “merely quantitative.” 2) Consider the fact that you felt the names Rejewski, Zygalski and Rozycki could be placed in an HN post without further explanation. Do people know who they are and what they did? Yes, they do. They’re not unknown or uncredited (though many others certainly are, as is the case with every other massive technical effort.) 3) I don’t think anyone has ever seriously suggested that Turing broke Enigma alone. And I don’t take Hollywood seriously: this is a medium that requires “the Enterprise bridge crew” of seven people to effectively solve every problem that comes up. But Turing’s contributions were very significant. And he never had a chance to brag about them: he maintained secrecy while many of his colleagues lived to see the work declassified.

by gregw2 2y ago

Detrytus 2y ago

Exactly. There are few good reasons to call Alan Turing a genius, but breaking Enigma definitely isn't one of them.

matthewdgreen 2y ago
There is no single “Enigma”. There were several variations of the Enigma with increasing amounts of complexity, and changing key management practices. Trying to hand credit for “the break” to one group is like trying to credit one chef for devising all gourmet cuisine.
- Detrytus 2y ago
  Well, trying to credit Turing alone is what frustrates me the most. To add some context: 1. In Rejewski's own words, all variations of the Enigma were "quantitive, not qualitive" - adding more rotors, changing them more frequently made the decryption more labor-intensive, but they did not change the main principle on which it worked, and Rejewski's team was able to figure those out pretty quickly, even before the war. 2. Rejewski, Zygalski, Rozycki they did not just disappear in September 1939, they continued their work, first in France, and then in Britain. Turing actually went to France in early 1940 to consult with them. 3. The main advantage that British "bomb" had over earlier Polish design came from improvement suggested not by Turing, but by Gordon Welchman.
  - matthewdgreen 2y ago
    1) “Quantity is its own quality” when it comes to ciphers. We can break many reduced-round ciphers easily but have no practical attack on the full version. This is not always true but it is close enough (even today) that nobody should mistake the impact of additional rotors as being “merely quantitative.” 2) Consider the fact that you felt the names Rejewski, Zygalski and Rozycki could be placed in an HN post without further explanation. Do people know who they are and what they did? Yes, they do. They’re not unknown or uncredited (though many others certainly are, as is the case with every other massive technical effort.) 3) I don’t think anyone has ever seriously suggested that Turing broke Enigma alone. And I don’t take Hollywood seriously: this is a medium that requires “the Enterprise bridge crew” of seven people to effectively solve every problem that comes up. But Turing’s contributions were very significant. And he never had a chance to brag about them: he maintained secrecy while many of his colleagues lived to see the work declassified.