Alternative Encryption Technologies of WWII

poster | 7-8-09 | poster

[Osnome]

>>The Atanasov-Berry Computer was brilliant, and a major innovation, but it was not programmable and was not Turing complete. In the end, we get back to ENIAC as the first general purpose, programmable computer.<<

Yes it was programmable, buy punch card. That was also its’ source of mass storage which had to be accessed by hand, thus not fully automatic a machine.

This machine could solve linear polynomial equations(which involves both arithmetic and logic actions), so it was more like a general purpose computer(for the time).

It had a defect that narrowed the machines reliability to equations of no more than 5 terms.

The Brits and Germans belittle this machine abilities and importance.

[Osnome]

In the 1970's Atanasoff won a court case against the builders of ENIAC for title of first computer. Mauchly and Eckert probably did borrow ideas from Atanasoff.

[Rockingham]

Still, programming for the Atanasov-Berry Computer was limited to its special purpose, while ENIAC was more in the nature of a general purpose computer.

[Osnome]

Very well

[Osnome]

Refering to the posting 42 I see now from the diagram that this machine was not all-electronic after all.

It seems that Binary(base2) was converted to Decimal(base10) by a mechanical rotating drum with metal fingers.
Do you agree - - ?

[Rockingham]

Yup. Of course, none of the early computers were all electronic, and they were expensive and absurdly difficult to use and maintain. Being a near contemporary of T. Rex, I am old enough to have run simple computer programs in college on machines that used ring magnets for core memory with input from punch cards. It was a true computer, but absurdly less capable and useful than a cheap PC today.

[Osnome]

I think they first started using core memory in the mid 1950's and were still placing them in computers in the late 1960's ~ the PDP-10 ?

[Osnome]

The Colossus Code Pattern Detection Machine:

[Osnome]

ENIAC, The original programmable electronic digital computer

[Osnome]

The Japanese Code Purple Machine. It is interesting to note that this machine is functionally derivative of Hebern's Rotor based cipher code encryption machine. Note that this interesting mechanism uses two rotors for the scrambler-unit whereas Hebern's used only one.

[Osnome]

Here is a pix of the rare 8-Rotor Printing Enigma, I believe This is definitely not the Lorenz Cipher nor is it the T52. Do you not agree?

[Osnome]

Ofcourse it is an Enigma machine, it says so on the front panel :-)

[Rockingham]

Bigger than a washing machine, and with less computer power than a Blackberry.

[Rockingham]

Good article.

Weaving the way to the Moon

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8148730.stm

The ‘weaving’ refers to the copper wires used in the ring core magnetic memory in Apollo program’s computers.