WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigma until after the war
After I watched <i>The Imitation Game</i> lately I read about the Polish efforts, almost totally ignored in that movie and everything I&#x27;d read, as if the British invented the whole thing, possibly Turing single-handedly. The article says &quot;based partly on an earlier Polish design&quot; but doesn&#x27;t say<p><i>Up to July 25, 1939, the Poles had been breaking Enigma messages for over six and a half years ... </i><p><i>The Poles&#x27; gift of Enigma decryption to their Western allies, five weeks before the outbreak of World War II, came not a moment too soon .. Gordon Welchman, head of Bletchley Park&#x27;s Hut 6...writes: &quot;Hut 6 Ultra would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details both of the German military version of the commercial Enigma machine, and of the operating procedures that were in use.&quot;</i><p><i>..French and British military intelligence,...had been unable to make any headway against Enigma. This Polish intelligence-and-technology transfer would give the Allies an unprecedented advantage (Ultra) in their ultimately victorious prosecution of World War II.</i><p>Also the name <i>bombe</i> is explained:<p><i>The first machine was built by the Poles and was a hand operated multiple enigma machine. When a possible solution was reached a part would fall off the machine onto the floor with a loud noise. Hence the name &quot;bombe&quot;.</i><p>There is a Polish movie about that story, <i>Sekret Enigmy</i> (1979), but I haven&#x27;t been able to get hold of it yet.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bomba_(cryptography)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bomba_(cryptography)</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Marian_Rejewski" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Marian_Rejewski</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Biuro_Szyfrów" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Biuro_Szyfrów</a><p><i>Sekret Enigmy</i>: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt0079878&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt0079878&#x2F;</a>