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Concept
Bomba (cryptography)
Summary
The bomba, or bomba kryptologiczna (Polish for "bomb" or "cryptologic bomb"), was a special-purpose machine designed around October 1938 by Polish Cipher Bureau cryptologist Marian Rejewski to break German Enigma-machine ciphers.
How the machine came to be called a "bomb" has been an object of fascination and speculation. One theory, most likely apocryphal, originated with Polish engineer and army officer Tadeusz Lisicki (who knew Rejewski and his colleague Henryk Zygalski in wartime Britain but was never associated with the Cipher Bureau). He claimed that Jerzy Różycki (the youngest of the three Enigma cryptologists, and who had died in a Mediterranean passenger-ship sinking in January 1942) named the "bomb" after an ice-cream dessert of that name. This story seems implausible, since Lisicki had not known Różycki. Rejewski himself stated that the device had been dubbed a "bomb" "for lack of a better idea". Perhaps the most credible explanation is given by a Cipher Bureau technician, Czesław Betlewski: workers at B.S.-4, the Cipher Bureau's German section, christened the machine a "bomb" (also, alternatively, a "washing machine" or a "mangle") because of the characteristic muffled noise that it produced when operating.
A top-secret U.S. Army report dated 15 June 1945 stated:
A machine called the "bombe" is used to expedite the solution. The first machine was built by the Poles and was a hand operated multiple enigma machine. When a possible solution was reached a part would fall off the machine onto the floor with a loud noise. Hence the name "bombe".
The U.S. Army's above description of the Polish bomba is both vague and inaccurate, as is clear from the device's description at the end of the second paragraph of the "History" section, below: "Each bomb... essentially constituted an electrically powered aggregate of six Enigmas..." Determination of a solution involved no disassembly ("a part... fall[ing] off") of the device.
Official source
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