Imitation Realistic?

[woodelf]

I may be thick - there's no may be about it," smiles Lie-in King - but are the calculations in the film The Imitation Game, which I think is based on the biog of Alan Turing, realistic, e.g. the timespan for breaking the enigma machine taking "20 million years of settings in 20 minutes" - and other such 'problems'? Ta Muchly.

[choux]

- bump -

[Peter Pedant]

The biog is by Andrew Hodges
and tries to force down our throats - Turingcd only have done it if he were gay....
and the more he says it ( writes it) the more it sticks in the readers' throats
Turing was a v bright maffatician and also gay

hey didja know - type in 1 y in seconds into the google bar and it converts - try it!
3.154e+7
say 30 million
so if there were 400 quadrillion setting at one a second
then 20 m y loooks OK

[Peter Pedant]

tiddly ponk tiddly ponk
they didnt go froo all quadrillion ( = British museum approach )
they found short cuts

first turing 'in a flash' realised that that an inconsistent soln wd cause a short circuit ( if ABC allows you to conclude D and not D then the machine will short circuit so go onto the next soln)

A never coded to A and that allowed them to prepare 'menus' taking advantage of various German Phrases - the short weather report was frequently - nothing to report

Eva was a coding clerk who always sent his messages accordinng to the settings of the day and a message code EVA

Maisie Thingey gave the lead to breaking the italian enigma by noticing a message had no 'L' in it and surmised the bored clerk had just done LLLLLLLL. Cunningham knew the Italian order of battle and was able to sink the fleet.

by the time the immensely compliated Lorenz code came out, the Brits were ready for it. if the pulleys really did go at 60 mph ( "when teh tapes broke tehre was a hell of a mess") then the switching speeds would approach a mega-flop
( one million floating point operations a second)

not seen again until the sevcenties