Computer science pioneer and cryptanalyst Alan Turing’s crowning achievement during World War II was helping British intelligence crack the fiendishly complicated codes used by the German military’s Enigma machine. In this video from the 2011 World Science Festival, journalist Simon Singh offers a peek at the Enigma machine’s inner workings. At the time, Enigma machines were used by banks and corporations to send their own private transmissions, but the German military added an extra component: a “plugboard” at the front of the machine that allowed for an extra layer of scrambling. With the plugboard, the German military’s Enigma machine could employ more than 158 quintillion different cipher settings. So how did Turing manage to crack the code? That story is dramatized in the new movie The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightly. The World Science Festival is hosting a special screening of the movie on November 19, followed by a discussion with screenwriter Graham Moore and physicist Janna Levin, moderated by journalist Faith Salie. Some standby tickets may still be available through the Museum of the Moving Image; also sign up for our mailing list to get word if more WSF tickets become available (and to gain early subscriber-only access to opportunities like this). (Featured Image Credit: Wikipedia CC/TedColes) By: World Science Festival Staff
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 01:07:09 +0000
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