Well, they wanted to use a single machine for both encoding and decoding of messages, so the use of a reflector to channel the signal right back through the rotors strikes me as rather pragmatic.

What bothers me is that they relied on "security through obscurity".

The sheer number of possible settings with 3 (4) rotors of a random configuration, each with adjustable rings, plus a plugboard with a variable number of connections -- that's a metric fuck-ton of permutations. But the rotors had fixed wiring and were limited in number. As soon as the Allies got their hands on a set of rotors, the possible number of settings was reduced radically. And the number of connections on the plugboard was standardized to 10 in '41.

Now, what if they had replaced one of the fixed-wiring rotors with a sort of pluggable rotor disc, a rotor that could be reconfigured on site within a minute? That would have screwed the boys at Bletchley Park, wouldn't it? Instead of 60 combinations for 3 out of 5, you'd have 20*26! (2 out of 5 and one random). Have it reconfigured daily, just like the starting positions, and brute force would have required much more effort.

It would still have been vulnerable, given the reflector issues, the nonsensical guidelines for the plugboard, the need to transmit settings, the vast numbers of codebooks, etc. But the numbers would have been more to their favor.

A little background for those who are interested.

During the beginnings of WW2 the Polish saw that the Germans were amassing armies of some magnitude and were certain that they couldn't hope to fight them. So they worked on cracking the codes that the Germans were using for communication. This was a fantastic piece of mathematics and was eventually put into practice via a machine called the Bomba.

The poles handed a copy of their findings to the British intelligence through a man called Knox, who would eventually become Turing's superior at Bletchley Park. It was later found out that Knox was also a homosexual, despite being married.

The enigma machine was altered after the Bomba was made, Turing analysed the code and mathematics and created a machine known as the Bombe. This was capable of cracking the enigma code by looking for contradictions.

This machine was later re-invented as The Colossus machines by a gifted engineer, Tommy Flowers. These machines were capable of cracking an enigma message in roughly 10 minutes. By the end of the war, the British were cracking the broadcasted Enigma coded messages before the Germans could themselves as they decoded messages manually using the enigma machine.

In 1945, Turing was awarded the OBE for his wartime services. He committed suicide in 1954, although this is disputed, especially by his mother.

In 2009 as the result of a petition, a government apology was issued by Gordon Brown for the way Turing had been treated.

"Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him ... So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better."

I've had the chance to learn a lot about Bletchley park in my studies of computing history, and what a remarkable man Turing was.

A personal hero of mine too. *promote

You know why the lawyer is crying; because the judge doesn't give a shit. The whole tone of that court is bullshit.

Now I'm going to use ad homimen against the quoted person below. Do you dislike the constitution; your comment would seem to put you in that category. This case is clear cut, the Judicial Branch in Nevada does not have the power to call that law what it is; bullshit. The balance of powers is not working, and it is clear in the judge’s tone of voice; "I wash my hands of this."

Read the 8th amendment.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Somehow I get the feeling that you would think the ultimatum imposed on Alan Turing was correct and immaculately moral. Read the following excerpt from Wikipedia. Turing’s ultimatum was chemical castration or imprisonment. Bear it in mind that this is the same era where Oppenheimer was persecuted for, what some would say, the same carelessness as Turing.

In January 1952 Turing picked up 19-year-old Arnold Murray outside a cinema in Manchester. After a lunch date, Turing invited Murray to spend the weekend with him at his house, an invitation which Murray accepted although he did not show up. The pair met again in Manchester the following Monday, when Murray agreed to accompany Turing to the latter's house. A few weeks later Murray visited Turing's house again, and apparently spent the night there.[38]

After Murray helped an accomplice to break into his house, Turing reported the crime to the police. During the investigation, Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray. Homosexual acts were illegal in the United Kingdom at that time,[6] and so both were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the same crime that Oscar Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years earlier.[39]

Turing was given a choice between imprisonment and probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. He accepted chemical castration via oestrogen hormone injections.[40] A side effect of the treatment caused him to grow breasts.

Turing's conviction led to the removal of his security clearance, and barred him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy for GCHQ. At the time, there was acute public anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents,[41] because of the recent exposure of the first two members of the Cambridge Five, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, as KGB double agents. Turing was never accused of espionage but, as with all who had worked at Bletchley Park, was prevented from discussing his war work.[42]

Your way of thinking is outdated, outmaneuvered and better suited for the middle ages; also misogyny doesn't suit you.

>> ^fjules:

She got sentenced for life because she refused to have her name on the sex offenders list. Basically, it's her own fault.
"wtf with the crying lawyer?"
Good reason why women can't be lawyers.

"As the pivotal intellect in the breaking of the German Enigma codes, Turing arguably made a greater contribution to defeating the Nazis than Eisenhower or Churchill. Thanks to Turing and his 'Ultra' colleagues at Bletchley Park, Allied generals in the field were consistently, over long periods of the war, privy to details German plans before the German generals had time to implement them. After the war, when Turing's role was no longer top secret, he should have been knighted and feted as a saviour of his nation. Instead, this gentle, stammering, eccentric genius was destroyed, for a 'crime', committed in private, which harmed nobody. Once again, the unmistakable trademark of the faith-based moralizer is to care passionately about what other people do (or even think) in private." -- The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins.

"Finally, Alan Turing, the great Bletchley Park code breaker, father of computer science and homosexual, died trying to prove that some things are fundamentally unprovable."

Unmitigated bullshit.

He committed suicide after being convicted of the crime of homosexuality and subjected to hormone therapy. Painting it as some quirk of genius is unfathomably ignorant.

Amazing what Alan Turing and the folks at Bletchley Park accomplished, breaking such a complicated cypher.