Code Cracking Key Facts Cards

Fact Card 1
Who was Alan Turing

• Alan Turing was a brilliant mathematician who was born in
London in 1912 and studied at both Cambridge and Princeton
universities.
• He worked part-time for the British Government’s Code and
Cypher School before the Second World War broke out.
• In 1939 he took up a full-time role at Bletchley Park in
Buckinghamshire.
• He died in 1954 and the vital work he carried out did not fully
come to light until long after his death.
• His impact on computer science has been widely acknowledged:
the annual ‘Turing Award’ has been the highest accolade in
Computer Science since 1966.
• The work of Bletchley Park – and Turing’s role there in cracking
the Enigma code – was kept secret until the 1970s, and the full
story was not known until the 1990s. Alan Turing statue Manchester
• The efforts of Turing and his fellow code-breakers shortened the
war by several years. They saved countless lives and helped the
Allies win the war.
• In 1945, Turing was awarded an OBE for his wartime work.
Fact Card 2
Enigma and the Bombe

• Turing’s main job at Bletchley was in cracking
the ‘Enigma’ code.
• The Enigma was a type of enciphering machine used by the
Germans to send secret messages securely.
• Although Polish mathematicians had worked out how to read
Enigma messages and had shared this information with the
British, the Germans increased its security at the outbreak of
war by changing the cipher system daily. This made the task of
understanding the code even more difficult.
• Turing played a key role in cracking this code, inventing a
machine known as the Bombe, along with fellow code-breaker
Gordon Welchman. This device helped to reduce the work of
the code-breakers. From mid-1940, German Air Force signals
were being read at Bletchley and the intelligence gained from
them was helping the war effort. Enigma machine
Fact Card 3
Bletchley Park
• Turing also worked to decrypt the
complex German naval communications
that had defeated many others at Hut 8
in Bletchley Park.
• G
erman U-boats were inflicting heavy
losses on Allied shipping so it was
important that the signals could be
deciphered.
• With the help of captured Enigma
material, and Turing’s work in developing
a technique he called ‘Banburismus’, the
Bletchley Park
naval Enigma messages were able to be
read from 1941.
• He headed the ‘Hut 8’ team at Bletchley, which carried out cryptanalysis of all German naval signals.
This meant that, apart from during a period in 1942 when the code became unreadable,
Allied convoys could be directed away from the U-boat ‘wolf-packs’.
• Turing’s role was pivotal in helping the Allies during
the Battle of the Atlantic.
Fact Card 4
Turingery and Delilah

• In July 1942, Turing developed a complex code-
breaking technique he named ‘Turingery’. This
method fed into work by others at Bletchley in
understanding the ‘Lorenz’ cipher machine.
• Lorenz enciphered German strategic messages of
high importance: the ability of Bletchley to read
these contributed greatly to the Allied war effort.
• Turing travelled to the United States in December
1942 to advise US military intelligence in the use
of Bombe machines and to share his knowledge of
Enigma.
• Whilst there, he also saw the latest American
progress on a top secret speech enciphering Lorenz cipher machine
system. Turing returned to Bletchley in March 1943, where he continued
his work in cryptanalysis.
• Later in the war, he developed a speech scrambling device which he named
‘Delilah’. Delilah was a small, compact device for working out the settings
on the “Turingey” or “Turingismus”.
Fact Card 5
More Code Cracking History

• Code and cipher-breaking has been
around for centuries
• Cryptanalysis – the art of deciphering encoded
messages – became vital during WW2 as British
boffins strived to decode encrypted German
military messages.
• Nearly 2000 years ago, Julius Caesar (a Roman A coded message sent by
Emperor), invaded many countries to increase Mary Queen of Scots.
the size of the Roman Empire. He needed a way
of communicating his battle plans and tactics to
his army without the enemy finding out. So Caesar would write messages to his generals in code. Instead of
writing the letter ‘A’, he would write the letter that comes three places further on in the alphabet,
the letter ‘D’.
• Mary Queen of Scots, when she was plotting against Elizabeth the First, devised a code replacing letters with
symbols. Mary wanted to kill Elizabeth so that she could become Queen of England
so sent coded messages to her co-conspirator Anthony Babington.
Unfortunately for Mary, her code was easy to decode using Mathematics!
Above is part of a letter sent by Mary Queen of Scots to Anthony Babington.
Information Sources:
Imperial War Museum:
http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-alan-turing-cracked-the-enigma-code
BBC History:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/code_breaking/
NRich Maths - The Secret World of Code Cracking:

https://nrich.maths.org/2197

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Fact Card 1

Who was Alan Turing

Enigma and the Bombe

Turingery and Delilah

More Code Cracking History

NRich Maths - The Secret World of Code Cracking:

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