World's First Computer Cracking Codes Again

During World War II the British set up a secret code breaking centre at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. From there they perfected the techniques and machines necessary to break the German Enigma codes and later the Lorenz code, used by the Germen High Command.

The Enigma machine was cracked by an electromechanical machine called the Bombe, designed by Alan Turing, the father of modern computing and was based on a design made by Polish engineers.


The Lorenz code was much more difficult to crack and for this job the Colossus was built. Colossus was the world’s first programmable computer and used electric valves instead of the mechanical rotors used by the Bombe, making it much faster.

After the War, all the Colossus machines were destroyed, to stop the technology falling into enemy hands (in this case probably the Russians, since the war had ended), but now a team at Bletchley Park have successfully re-created one and it is now once again cracking the Lorenz code.

Bletchley Park is now a museum to computing and the code breaking efforts of World War II and is a fascinating place to visit for anybody interested in computers or history.

The work done at Bletchley Park was of such value that it probably shortened the war by 6 months and saved many countless lives. However, this did not stop Alan Turing being convicted of gross indecency after been caught having a homosexual relationship in the 1950s. Even though he was a hero of the war, he was still sentenced to undergo chemical castration and eventually committed suicide in 1954.