[GreenKeys] Re: WW II-Era Computers

[Craig Sawyers]

Hi Don

Yes - there is a walk though of the machine here
http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/vcolossus/colossus.htm .

There is a video of Tony describing the Lorenz here
http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/anoraks/pods/lorenz/fvlorenz.html.  In
point of fact the darned thing was playing up, so I spent yesterday
dismantling every one of the 12 wheels you can see to clean out the wartime
tarry grease and reassembling them with new grease.  I will reassemble the
whole thing again on Monday, and then we'll see!  The Germans always had two
of these at least on a comms link and as many spares as they could lay their
hands on, since they were known to be twitchy.

There are also videos on of Colossus in operation here
http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/anoraks/pods/index.htm with Tony giving a
blow by blow of how it works, how it is set up to break a code etc...

Enjoy!

Craig

> -----Original Message-----
> From: greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net
> [mailto:greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net]On Behalf Of Don
> Robert House
> Sent: 12 October 2007 17:07
> To: Craig Sawyers
> Cc: David Allen; Greenkeys; David Weil
> Subject: [GreenKeys] Re: WW II-Era Computers
>
>
> Craig,
>
> Thank you very much for sharing this information.  Are images of the
> now working Colossus available on-line?
> A video clip would be really impressive!
>
> Best,
> Don
> K9TTY
>
> On 12 Oct 2007, at 1:27 AM, Craig Sawyers wrote:
>
> ...Bletchely Park was using 10 Colossus computers by the end of the
> war to decrypt messages between Hitler's field
> commanders and the Berlin bunker.  These used a combination of 2000
> valves (vacuum tubes) and a tape loop that passed the encrypted text
> past a bank of photocells at 60 miles an hour and 5000
> characters per
> second.  It took up to 6 hours to calculate the wheel
> settings of the
> 12 rotor Lorenz SZ42 cipher machine.
>
> One Colossus Mk II has been rebuilt at Bletchley by Tony Sale over
> the last 13 years, and works every day for 8 hours, and breaks test
> encrypted messages in 6 hours - the same length of time it takes a
> Pentium PC to break the same message.
>
> Craig
>
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