Today in Tech History: May 9, 2008 Video
Today in Tech History: May 9, 2008 Video Transcript
Hi, I'm Molly Wood from CNET TV. It's May 9, 2008, and here's what happened today in tech history. On this date in 1941, the Royal Navy captured a German U-boat carrying the latest Enigma cryptography machine ... AND a codebook for it. See, Allied forces had managed to decipher SOME Enigma-encoded messages, mainly because of work done by Polish intelligence and mathematicians. But the Enigma codes were still mostly indecipherable. That codebook captured in 1941 and a couple of later captures helped the Allies crack the German ciphers, and some experts believe the cryptography work may have shortened World War II by as much as two years. For a fun and largely fictionalized read about Enigma machines and the code-breaking project code-named ULTRA, check out "Cryptonomicon," by Neal Stephenson. There's some good math geekery in there. There you go ... some tech history AND a reading recommendation. What will we have for you tomorrow? Tune in to find out.
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