1940 to 1949: Computing During World War II and the Postwar Era - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 56

Computers in Great Britain During World War II
Because of the success of British code-breakers in solving the codes generated by
the German Enigma and FISH machines, the work at Bletchley Park has become
famous and is described in topics and feature films. Not only did Bletchley Park
and computers play a significant part in World War II but also one of the greatest
pioneers of computing, Alan Turing, worked there during the war.
In the summer of 1939, when it was obvious that war was going to occur, the
British government evacuated the Government Code and Cipher School to Bletch-
ley Park, a large manor house located about 50 miles away from London in Buck-
inghamshire. Although the initial staff at Bletchley was small, by the time the war
ended, about 10,000 people were working there and using a variety of temporary
buildings called “huts.” Alan Turing was located in hut 8, which has become fam-
ous.
Many of the mathematicians were from the Women's Royal Navy Service
(WRNS). Here, too, women were pioneers in computing and software.
In 1936, prior to joining Bletchley, Alan Turing published his famous paper
“On Computable Numbers,” which became the logical and philosophical basis
for computer architecture. Even today, the concept of computers as being “Turing
complete” is used to ascertain if computing equipment can handle all of the con-
cepts in Turing's seminal paper.
In July 1939, Turing was one of the British mathematicians who received secret
information from Polish mathematicians about decoding German codes based
on the Enigma. In fact, they received a working Enigma machine that could be
reverse-engineered.
As mentioned earlier, Turing developed a new and improved form of machine
called the Bombe at Bletchley Park. The version developed by Turing was elec-
tromechanical. It was a massive machine that was about eight feet high and
weighed at least a ton. It used wheels similar to the Enigma machine. The local
name at Bletchley for this first Bombe was “the bronze goddess.”
Turing was not the only brilliant mathematician and inventor at Bletchley Park.
T. H. Flowers was the chief architect of a fast electronic computer that became
known as Colossus and was aimed at decrypting codes based on the FISH Lorenz
coding scheme.