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PC Beats WWII Computer in Code Challenge
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 16, 2007 Filed at 7:03 p.m. ET

LONDON (AP) -- A rebuilt World War II code-cracking computer developed
to intercept Nazi messages lost to a desktop computer Friday in a
contest to decipher an encrypted radio message.

The challenge marked the first time the Colossus machine had been used
since former Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered models of the top
secret computer destroyed, according to Britain's National Museum of
Computing, which organized the contest.

Churchill had feared Britain's national security would be threatened if
the state of the art computer's technical details ever leaked out.

However, not only was Colossus beaten by a home computer, but by one in
Germany.

Bonn-based software engineer Joachim Schueth deciphered the message,
which was encrypted by a Nazi-era Lorenz cipher machine and transmitted
by radio from Paderborn, Germany. It took him two hours Thursday, an
hour and 35 minutes faster than the Colosssus. He used ham radio
equipment and a computer program he wrote especially for the challenge.

Schueth paid tribute to Colossus and those who used it during WWII at
the Bletchley Park code-breaking center, outside London, saying their
work was important to Germans because ''it helped to shorten the
lifetime of the Nazi dictatorship.''

But Colossus, the world's first programable computer, was no match for
its electronic descendants, he said.

''Putting Colossus in a competition with modern computers may be a bit
unfair,'' Schueth wrote on his Web site.

Colossus eventually completed the challenge in three hours and 35
minutes, after overcoming difficulties intercepting the distant radio
signal and repairing a blown valve.

''We've lost appreciation of just how hard it was to intercept signals,
interpret them and put them on Colossus and run them,'' said Andy Clark,
director of the Bletchley Park-based computing museum.

''The past two days have brought into sharp focus just how hard they had
to work,'' he said.

Experts spent 14 years rebuilding the Colossus using stolen design plans
and by gleaning information from those who helped create the original.

Ten Mark II Colossus machines enabled code breakers at Bletchley to
decipher top-secret communications sent by the Nazi high command.

The rebuilt computer will continue to operate as the museum's
centerpiece, Clark said.

http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-WWII-Computer.html