An electromechanical codebreaking machine used at Bletchley Park to find daily settings for the German Enigma cipher machine. Alan Turing produced the initial design in 1939, and Gordon Welchman devised an important refinement, the diagonal board, in 1940; the design itself built on the Polish Cipher Bureau's earlier bomba kryptologiczna, developed by Marian Rejewski. The first machine, code-named Victory, was installed in March 1940. Roughly 700 members of the Women's Royal Naval Service (Wrens) operated about 70 Bombes at the war's peak; the same wartime secrecy that protected Bletchley Park's work is why so few of them were individually named or credited for decades afterward. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
SignificanceDeveloped from, not independent of, the Polish Cipher Bureau's own bomba kryptologiczna; Marian Rejewski's earlier Polish design is the machine's direct ancestor, a debt the British effort is on record as building from rather than originating. 1 Connections
In Field
Source Wikipedia: Bombe
Invented By
Source Wikipedia: Bombe
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Bombe
Wikimedia FoundationOverview and Bombe operators sections
about 700 Wrens... to operate approximately 70 bombes
Design and manufacture section
The British Bombe was developed from the Polish bomba
- In Field: Cryptography, Overview section
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