Message:Seems like this story needs to come up about once a year too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2_Q9FoD-oQ&feature=emb_logo
A simplified version of how the Enigma code breaking was done.
(1) Of course, as we know the Poles were the original code breakers until they were crushed by the Germans. Hat tip to the Poles!!!! It's not how hard you get hit ... it's how hard you can get hit and still get up.
(2) It's not what you know, it's what you don't know that allowed them to break the code. Since the letter could not become itself, they knew something from the code. Great story from WW2.
(3) The wooden box that the device is in is amazing. I know, I know, .... not the point of the story but ... man ... that's a nice box.
(4) In the first section, the narrator describes how the Germans would use the code to transmit signals to the battle field where they would slaughter the good tolerant people of the world. I noted that the narrator was only using male pronouns to describe the evil people killers and I thought ... that's gender-ist ... like a woman couldn't be an Evil German tank commander or something good or bad like that. (Really, my brain paused ... whoa whoa whoa ... what's with all the male pronouns.) Say what you want about the Germans, they are genocidal murderers and all but they're not ... racis .... well they were that too ... but they weren't gender ... well they were that too but ... well they've changed and aren't trying to take over the worl ... Man that was a nice wooden box.
(5) We made a similar device when I was 15 using an HO Train Transformer and cardboard squares, wires stripped to form a random matrix, and Christmas lights. We were making a shoot dudes up in space game but we could have been making an unbeatable code. Just as a safety note, using copper wires to run through flammable cardboard squares over extended periods is not recommended. Every child should play with lethal electricity and flammable materials to make a space shoot up game. Consider it a right of passage.
(6) Not that it's a small matter but if the bosch had just put some typos into their messages, the Brits would have never broken them. Never underestimate the value of a good trypo. (Trypo ... see what I did there.)
(7) No comment on how this could be used to make a 5 x 5 powers matrix that could be used in an RPG game.
Yours,
IronConrad
28-Dec-2020