The History of Computing and the Internet
When was the first computer made and why?
History was made when Alan Turing developed the first computer called the Bombe during the Second World War to decrypt the Germans Enigma Machine.
When was the first computer made and why?
History was made when Alan Turing developed the first computer called the Bombe during the Second World War to decrypt the Germans Enigma Machine.
Alan Turning born in Warrington Lodge, London, on the 23rd of June 1912 was awarded a major scholarship to King College, Cambridge in 1931. He studied quantum mechanics, probability, logic and presented his first paper to the London Mathematical Society on computable numbers and proposed an abstract universal computing machine. On the 4th of September 1939 reported for duty at Blechley Park. “It was the darkest time for Britain and for British intelligence. Not a single Enigma-coded message had been solved in almost 10 months” (O’Connor 2000, p. 14)
The Enigma Machine was a device that was used by the Nazis to communicate with each other by secret codes; thousands of codes were transmitted each day. The codes were changed every day so that the British could not decrypt them.
The Enigma Machine
http://www.eclipse.net/~dhamer/Enigma1.htm
Alan Turning developed the Bombe in 1940 with the help of Gordon Welchman. The Bombe was created to discover the daily codes of the enigma machine, once the bombe determined the secret messages; the British decrypted the codes. The first Bombe made was named “victory” and was based at Bechley Park (Bletchley Park Jewels). The Bombe won the Second World War for the British.
The Bombe
http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/Bombe-1943.htm
References
O’Connor, Jerome M, 2000, “Alan turing-enigma” British heritage, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 14
Bletchley Park Jewels, Qutstations – A Brief History, Viewed 18 August 2011,
< http://www.mkheritage.co.uk/bpt/Outstations/Wavendon.htm>
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