I decided to take on the problem of German naval Enigma because no one was doing anything about it and I could have it to myself. In December 1939 I solved part of the naval indicator system, which was very complex. On the same night I also thought of the idea of Banburismus, a technique to help breaking the naval enigma, though I was not sure it would work in practice, and was not in fact sure until somedays had actually broken. For this I invented a device called the Ban, which measured weight.
I traveled to the United States in November of 1942 and worked with the US Navy cryptanalysis on Naval Enigma and bombe making in Washington. I visited their Computing Machine Laboratory at Dayton, Ohio and I was far from enthusiastic:
It seems a pity for them to go out of their way to build a machine to do all this stopping if not necessary. I am now converted to the extent of thinking that starting from scratch on the design of a Bombe, this method is about as good as our own The American Bombe program was to produce 336 bombes, one for each wheel order. I used to smile inwardly at the conception of test of commutators can hardly be considered conclusive as they were not testing for the bounce with electronic stop finding devices.
I traveled to the United States in November of 1942 and worked with the US Navy cryptanalysis on Naval Enigma and bombe making in Washington. I visited their Computing Machine Laboratory at Dayton, Ohio and I was far from enthusiastic:
It seems a pity for them to go out of their way to build a machine to do all this stopping if not necessary. I am now converted to the extent of thinking that starting from scratch on the design of a Bombe, this method is about as good as our own The American Bombe program was to produce 336 bombes, one for each wheel order. I used to smile inwardly at the conception of test of commutators can hardly be considered conclusive as they were not testing for the bounce with electronic stop finding devices.