Re: [math-fun] "Steampunk" mathematics?
And how could I neglect both the Enigma machines and Turing's "bombe" devices, which were mechanical computers used to codebreak enigma messages.
And how could I neglect both the Enigma machines and Turing's "bombe" devices, which were mechanical computers used to codebreak enigma messages.
Does steampunk allow electricity? If not, you might have to limit your cryptography to Hagelin machines, although there is a picture of a pneumatic rotor machine in The Codebreakers. Whit
Don't know where it fits in, but in the early 60s my son Mike and John Conway constructed SAMBA --- don't remember what that stands for, but the B is probably ball-bearings. It was a sort of vertical pinball machine which did addition of one-digit numbers. I especially remember the delay lines, which were very slightly sloping channels which retarded the ball bearings until an earlier operation was completed. R. On Thu, 11 Sep 2014, Dave Dyer wrote:
And how could I neglect both the Enigma machines and Turing's "bombe" devices, which were mechanical computers used to codebreak enigma messages.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigen%C3%A8re_cipher "Charles Babbage is known to have broken a variant of the [Vigenère cipher] cipher as early as 1854; however, he didn't publish his work." If Babbage had indeed been able to build a steam-driven code-breaking machine, such a machine would definitely have changed history. At 11:43 AM 9/11/2014, Dave Dyer wrote:
And how could I neglect both the Enigma machines and Turing's "bombe" devices, which were mechanical computers used to codebreak enigma messages.
participants (4)
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Dave Dyer -
Henry Baker -
rkg -
Whitfield Diffie