imitation game movie

[Jon Elson]

On 02/10/2015 08:20 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> Hmm. The descriptions I've seen of their manufacture (e.g. Gordon Welchman,
> "The Hut Six Story", pp. 138-141, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, "Enigma: The Battle
> for the Code", pp. 56-58) all indicate that the machines were manufactured by
> British Tabulating Machines in their Letchworth factory (about half-way
> between BP and Cambridge), and only came to BP once they were completed.
> There was a lot of local sub-contracting of small sub-assemblies which didn't
> require machining, though (see Welchman).
>
>
OK, but there are some descriptions that the actual wiring 
of the rotors was done AT
Bletchley, for security reasons.  If a German spy was to get 
his hands on the drawings
for even one (wired) rotor, they would have realized how 
thoroughly the British
had penetrated the Enigma system, and would have to come up 
with a new system.
So, it makes sense that the actual rotor wiring was REALLY 
strictly compartmentalized.

So, did the Brits actually have 350 Bombes?  Were they 
Bletchley Bombes or NCR
Bombes?  I'm guessing from what you say above they were the 
Bletchley (slow)
version.  If they did have 350 of them, they would have 
taken up a HUGE amount
of space, something like 10,000 square feet, given some 
space to work around
each unit.  Ft. Meade had theirs in a huge warehouse like 
building, with a team
of cipher clerks working around them constantly to record 
when the got hits.

Jon