Essay:
In the movie “The Imitation Game” (2014), a challenge is set, which is very crucial for England’s chances against Germany in world war II. The challenge was to break “the enigma code”. The enigma code was used by the germans to send messages, that none-educated wouldn’t be able to read, because they were coded. The messages sent with the help of the enigma machine, were highly classified, and included anything from a weather report to where the next attack was going to take place. To decrypt the enigma code, a team of highly ranked mathematicians, were called in for an interview. One of these men was the british mathematician, Alan Turing.
When interviewed by Commander Denniston, Turing didn’t seem fit for the job, even though he a record of mathematical success at an early age. With some convincing, Turing managed to get the rather secret job. The place Turing would be working with his associates, was at a radio factory, called Bletchley Park. When the operation first started, the crew worked the old-fashioned way, by trying to decrypt messages by hand. All of this was done with the command of Commander Denniston. As Turing preferred to work on his own, he sent word to Commander Denniston’s boss. In return, Turing got the privilege of being in charge of the crew. With this power, he fired two of his colleagues. Now that the team were down two men, they had to find replacements. This was done by sending out a flyer, which had a cross-word challenge on it. If you could beat the crossword within a certain amount of time, you were told to contact Turing. A new test was now arranged by Turing. One of the people who turned up, was a woman named Joan Clarke. Clarke was the first to finish the test, and was hereby classified to work with Turing. Turing really cared for Joan, and they slowly fell in slow. Despite this, Turing was having a hard time, when thinking of her, because he was holding a secret from her - he was a homosexual.
Turing had the thought that humans couldn’t beat the german’s machine, so in order to beat a machine, they had to build a machine. The machine was named after his childhood friend, Christopher, who died at a young age. Turing had always been a “different” kid, and the only friend he really had was Christopher. This, including that Christopher was the person, who gave Turing the interest of decoding and ciphering, really made a big impact on him. When the machine was done, it didn’t initially work, but with some creative thinking, the crew made a configuration, which made the machine work exactly how it was supposed to be. Now, as Christopher stood ready, England could win the war, with the secret use of the machine. After the war, everything started going downhill for Turing. His secret about being a homosexual got out, and he got put on hormonal medicine. At this time being a homosexual was considered a human-indecency. Medicine like this can have quite a bit of side effects. This led to Turing taking his own life at the age of 41. The movie follows the real events closely, but by it being a movie, mistakes are bound to be made. One of these could for example be that Turing wasn’t the only one working on his machine. Another thing was that the real reason that they were able to crack to code wasn’t shown. This was because the enigma machine wasn’t able to produce the same letter, which was pressed. You could hereby line up sentences and figure out what letters meant what.
Translation of words from the movie
Dekryptering. (Decryption) betyder at bryde en kode, som kun var ment at kunne brydes af den retmæssige modtager.
Enigma. (Enigma) oversættes til en gåde. Tyskerne mente ikke at det ville være muligt for andre at bryde koden, og at det derfor ville være en “gåde”.
Vidunder. (Prodigy) er et vidunder, eller en som er meget god til noget. I filmen kunne det fx være Turing som allerede fra en tidlig alder, var god til matematik.
Middelmådig. (Mediocrity) brugt på samme måde, når man kigger på hvor gode folk er til noget. Fx at Turing ikke var helt middelmådig socialt set, men et vidunder matematisk set.
Anderledes. (An odd duck) betyder at være anderledes, og passer måske ikke helt i nogle grupper, socialt set. Turing var i filmen anderledes da han var barn, fordi at han var klogere end de andre.
Homoseksuel. (A puff) kan også betyde at trække vejret hurtigt og med besvær, men bruges nok i sammenhæng med om Turing, fordi at han var homoseksuel.
Militær gruppering. (Brigade) kan også benyttes til tale om almene mennesker til hverdagsaktiviteter, men i dette tilfælde betyder det en gruppering af tropper.
Mandskab. (Crew) bruges når man snakker om et mandskab på fx et skib eller et mandskab brugt til en tank.
Håndbog. (Manual) er en nedskrevet guide til hvordan en sagt ting skal udføres.
Stempel. (Stigma) er et mærke på en persons krop, som har en betydning. Dette kunne fx være et hagekors, som er blevet tatoveret.
Næsvis. (Saucy) at være næsvis kunne fx være, hvis man svarer en person på en respektløs og/eller uhøflig måde.
Under. (During) ligger ofte til, når man snakker om en tidsperiode. Fx: “han arbejdede på en maskine under krigen.”
Matematisk færdighed. (Mathematical proficiency) Proficiency omtaler ens evner indenfor det specielle emne. Her er det matematik. Eks.: “både Turing og hans “Bombe” maskine har høj matematik færdighed.”
Throughout history, there have been a lot of different versions of the enigma machine. Despite this, we can categorize the machines into two groups. The ones for private use, and the ones for military use. The “military Enigma” was first introduced in 1932, and was an improved version of the Enigma Z or Z30 machine. The difference with this new machine, was that it had a so called “plugboard”, which added another layer of ciphers. Already in the mid-1930s germany was preparing for an anticipated war. Because of this, they started ordering a lot of Enigma machines. When World War 2 rolled around, these machines would give the germans a clear advantage. Because of this, it was crucial for every enemy of the germans, to find a way to decrypt the messages. The problem with this was, that whenever you would press a key on the Enigma machine, a what seemed to be random, would show up. What has to be done now is finding a way to know what the letters mean what. The first step of solving the code, is figuring out how to machine works.
The machine works in the following way: The operator of the machine presses a key. This creates an electric signal. If it was the letter T which was pressed, the electric signal would follow the path of T. Now this signal comes to the plugboard. Here the operator has the chance to change things up, by connecting some of the letters to other letters. You can also keep the letter as it was originally. Let’s say we connect the letter T to the letter K.
Now the signal goes to the static rotor. Here nothing happens to the signal, but is more of a station, which sends the signal to the next rotor.
The next stop is the rotors (scramblers). Each machine would come with 5 of these rotors, but only 3 could be used at a time. Each of the rotors has an inner and an outer ring of contacts. The outer ring was used to connect the part of the machine, which was next to it. Static rotor to the scramblers and the scramblers to the reflector. The inner ring can rotated relative to the outer ring. The whole rotor itself can also be rotated. This means that the “K” that comes out of the static rotor isn’t connected to the “K” on the rotor, which is rotating. To add to the complexion, when a letter enters the rotors, it makes the rotors rotate one position. This means that if you’re writing a message, two of the same letter are never connected. The last thing that can be done in the scramblers, is that you can change the “notches” on the different rotors. When the rotor reaches this notch, it makes the rotor to the left of itself rotate. If this occurs to the middle rotor, both the middle and the rotor to the left rotate.
The next stop is the reflector. What the reflector does is that it changes the signal and sends it back through the rotors. In total we have two reflectors. we can just call these reflector one and two. If we we say we get the letter P out of the rotors, the reflector might turn it into the letter H. The signal is now sent back through the rotors.
Going back through the rotors, influences the signal the same way, as the first time. Our letter “H” might now become “G.” Going through the middle rotor makes it become “R” and going through the right and last rotor, makes it become “A.” The static rotor once again won’t change the signal. Now the signal comes back to the plugboard, where the signal is changed from “A” to “Z.”
The signal ends at the lampboard, where the output of the plugboard is connected to the matching lamp. A letter will now light up on the lampboard. If the “T” lights up, it means that the letter “T” is encrypted as the letter “Z”.
This means that in order to decrypt a code from another machine, you would have to know every setting and have to know the output message. Now you would press their output letter as your input letter, and write down your output letter. This would be done for every letter in the message.
With the knowledge of how the machine works, the people at Bletchley Park, were able to figure out how to crack the code. The flaw was that the machine wasn’t able produce the same letter twice in the same sentence.
If this discovery wouldn’t have been made, the cost of the war would have been even higher. It is said that the cracking of the code, reduced the length of the war by about two year, and saved about 14 million lives. Without the breaking of the code, the war would have turned out completely different.