WW II Codebreaking with the Bombe and Colossus

Anthony E Sale, Hon FBCS ( Museums Director, Bletchley Park )

Highly successful attempts to break German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers in WW II in Bletchley Park are now declassified. They involved the development of powerful electromechanical search engines, the Turing Bombes, and the Colossus, the world's first large (2,500 valve) electronic logic calculator.

Tony Sale will describe how Enigma and Lorenz were broken, the recent start of the Bombe Rebuild Project and the three year reconstruction of a fully working Colossus in Bletchley Park. He will demonstrate the very real power of these remarkable machines with the aid of an interactive simulation.