Geniuses at War: Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital AgeThe dramatic, untold story of the brilliant team whose feats of innovation and engineering created the world’s first digital electronic computer—decrypting the Nazis’ toughest code, helping bring an end to WWII, and ushering in the information age. • Winner, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Middleton Award for "a book ... that both exemplifies exceptional scholarship and reaches beyond academic communities toward a broad public audience." • A Kirkus Best Book of 2022 • Planning the invasion of Normandy, the Allies knew that decoding the communications of the Nazi high command was imperative for its success. But standing in their way was an encryption machine they called Tunny (British English for “tuna”), which was vastly more difficult to crack than the infamous Enigma cipher. To surmount this seemingly impossible challenge, Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker, brought in a maverick English working-class engineer named Tommy Flowers who devised the ingenious, daring, and controversial plan to build a machine that would calculate at breathtaking speed and break the code in nearly real time. Together with the pioneering mathematician Max Newman, Flowers and his team produced—against the odds, the clock, and a resistant leadership—Colossus, the world’s first digital electronic computer, the machine that would help bring the war to an end. Drawing upon recently declassified sources, David A. Price’s Geniuses at War tells, for the first time, the full mesmerizing story of the great minds behind Colossus and chronicles the remarkable feats of engineering genius that marked the dawn of the digital age. |
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Geniuses at War: Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital Age David A. Price Limited preview - 2021 |
Geniuses at War: Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital Age David A. Price No preview available - 2021 |
Common terms and phrases
6813th Signals Alan Turing Alastair Denniston Allies American binary Blackett Bletchley Park Bombe break Brian Randell Britain British Intelligence Cambridge character Churchill Churchill's cipher Codebreaking Colossus Coombs cryptanalyst cryptographers decryption Design of Colossus digital electronics Dollis Hill enciphering engineer Erskine Fensom Flowers oral history Flowers's GC&CS Government Code Heath Robinson Hinsley History of 6813th Hitler Ibid idea intercepted John John Tiltman June knew later letter London Lorenz Luftwaffe machine mathematicians mathematics Max Newman MHAN Michie Milner-Barry months NARA National Security naval Enigma Nazi Newmanry operation oral history 1976 paper tape Park's Post Office problem radio received recruit remembered Research Secret Security Agency staff Station T. H. Flowers Technical History telephone teleprinter Testery Tiltman tion told Tommy Flowers Travis tubes Tunny Tunny messages Turing's turned Tutte Tutte's U-boats U.S. Army UKNA Welchman wheel settings Womersley Wrens wrote Wynn-Williams