Comment by billfruit
Comment by billfruit 3 days ago
Any good book that delves into the detail of the code breaking done at Bletchley park?
Comment by billfruit 3 days ago
Any good book that delves into the detail of the code breaking done at Bletchley park?
Having read this book, I set some codes for my son to break. Each code, once broken, told him the location of the next coded message. And they got progressively harder. It was a fun challenge.
The author of this book also runs an excellent weekly maths newsletter/quiz for 11-16 year olds, and it's free:
The Hut 6 Story, goes into enough detail that Gordon Welchman (Simply put, Turing's boss) lost his security clearance. If you care about the human side, but are keen to take on the details there's no better book possible.
If you want a book in the same vein, and contemporary with Bletchley "Turning's Cathedral" by George Dyson is about the Institute for Advanced Study and the Manhattan Project. Needless to say there's a lot of overlap and it really defines the culture of computer engineering at the time.
On the American side, "The Woman Who Smashed Codes" by Jason Fagone is really good.
If you would enjoy loosely related fiction, Neal Stephenson Cryptonomicon is an option I would personally recommend. You must have some tolerance for his particular style and content…
This is a great book and touches on the subject you mention https://simonsingh.net/books/the-code-book/