I find it incredible that Nazi Germany created - during a time when computers ran on vacuum tubes and occupied space the size of an apartment - Enigma codes so complex that even computers of the 21st century struggle to crack them!

And from the home page of Enigma@Home:

4989 years, 197 days, 17 hours, 47 minutes of Athlon 1400 CPU time

Wow, thats alot of CPU time!

Yup. The Germans really, really, really didn't want you to know what they were talking about, eh? :)

Of course, we struggle with some messages, but try doing this on the fly while being bombed by the Germans, and your "computer" has vacuum tubes and gears. Sounds McGyverish now doesn't it?

Mike Doerner

---

Except that they were working on 2,000yrs or more of hand crafted codes.

Also there were no electronic computers in the post WW1 days when the Enigma machine was patented.

Computers were people who ran analog geared mechanical computing (adding machines).

You should read more mathematical computing machines.


RHB