Code breaking challenge, 1945 vs 2007


According to BBC for the first time in more than 60 years a Colossus computer will be cracking codes at Bletchley Park. For all of you that don’t know. Bletchley Park was the site that Alan Turing and other brilliant men worked when they cracked, among else, the German Enigma codes during World War II. Another reason I find this particularly interesting is that I recently finished the novel "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. Some of the story in that book takes place at Bletchley Park and deals among else with that wartime effort. So, when "participants" from that book resurfaces as a rebuild and is matched up against at modern computer in a code cracking challenge, I find it quite intriguing.

Update: 2007-11-19

The colossus lost the challenge. Well probably not too unexpected. It is after all a machine built in 1943. There are a few generations between that machine and a modern day PC. Read more here

Leave a Reply