When work and hobbies collide
by AndyC on Oct.29, 2008, under Computers, Ham Radio, Musing
My job took me to the RSA Conference in London this year where the theme of the conference was the life and work of Alan Turing. This painfully shy genius helped turn the tide of the Second World War from a cold hut at the now famous site of Bletchley Park.
As part of the theme, Bletchley provided an Enigma machine as well as a number of other variations, some of where were in use as late as the 1970s.
The collision, of course, is that the Enigma messages were sent via morse code. Thinking about being able to send and received encrypted messages – just random strings of letters – and the whole process of using the machine to code and decode them, gives a whole new level of respect for the difficulties in communication just 60 years ago.
I’m on Facebook, too!
