Here is how Alan Turing became the real hero for cracking the Nazi codeThe Enigma machine was a very confusing contraption, but here is how the unbreakable Nazi code story was formed
So how was this any different compared to the contraptions present in banks or financial institutions? This German machine had an additional layer of encoding. At the front of the machine was something called as a plugboard, which looked like a small switchboard. This allowed the coding coming through the rotors to be re-sequenced for to be scrambled once more, making it even more difficult to crack the code. In fact, the total number of possible combinations for message encryptions came to an unbelievable figure of 158,962,555,217,826,360,000, which ends up being in the quadrillion zone, if you did not end up noticing it.
However, Turing did more for his country and for that, his account should be told. Turing, along with other cryptanalysts initially discovered that they could decipher ordinary words and phrases in the Enigma messages by matching them up with strings of random letters that never repeated. However, there was a little obstacle standing in the way, because in order to crack the code of the Enigma machine, both the sender and receiver needed to have the exact same settings on their rotors and plugboards. Keep in mind that the messages were transmitted through Morse code.
Now what did Alan Turing do? He, along with Gordon Welchman, developed their own form of the Bombe, allowing both of them to break any version of the Enigma code in under 20 minutes. How was this thing possible? It bypassed the time-consuming ‘guess the number’ game and went straight for the message. Despite his efforts to crack the Enigma machine, Alan Turing is remembered as an enemy. However, we will continue to remember what he really was.
