The British developed a machine called a Bombe that was able to decode the messages, but the Germans revamped their Enigma machine and added a fourth rotor. The British Bombe could no longer decypher the messages.
That’s where Dayton and a man named Joseph Desch came in.
Here are 7 things to know about Dayton’s role in cracking German ciphers:
1. Top secret. Joseph R. Desch, who grew up on Dayton's west side, headed a top-secret program in 1942 and 1943 at National Cash Register to develop an American version of the code-breaking Bombe that could break the four-rotor Enigma machine.
2. Calculating skill. One reason Desch was selected was because of his and NCR's work on inventing the first electronic calculator, according to research by Jim DeBrosse, a former Dayton Daily News reporter who co-wrote the book "The Secret in Building 26."
3. Endless combinations. "For a single scrambled letter, there were more possible settings for the Engima machine than there are atoms in the known universe," according to DeBrosse. "Desch's Bombe was the equivalent to 16 Engima machines working at high speed in reverse."
4. Women made the difference. Hundreds of Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) worked in Dayton during World War II assembling the top-secret machines. Each Bombe rolled on wheels, weighed two tons and measured 2 feet wide, 7 feet tall and 10 feet long.
5. Turing inspects work. Alan Turing, an English computer scientist and mathematician who developed the British code breaking machine, visited Dayton on Dec. 21, 1942 to see the work being done at NCR. A movie, "The Imitation Game," was made about Turing and his work and starred Benedict Cumberbatch.
6. Bringing about the end of the war. During the war 120 U.S. Bombe machines were installed, and the U.S. took responsibility for decoding the majority of the German Enigma messages according to the Crypto Museum website. All but one of the Bombes were destroyed after the war. The last one made by NCR is on display at the National Cryptologic Museum at Fort Meade in Maryland.
7. An impact like no other. In 1947, President Harry Truman awarded Desch the Medal for Merit, the highest U.S. civilian decoration, for his wartime work. Desch died in 1987 at 80.
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