The Bombe (noun)

Rick Howard: The word is Bombe.

Rick Howard: Spelled: B as in badass Alan Turing, O as in OPSEC, M as in man in the middle, B as in Bletchley Park and E as in Enigma.

Rick Howard: Definition: a bombe is an electromechanical device used to break Enigma-enciphered messages about enemy military operations during the Second World War.

Rick Howard: Example sentence: Alan Turing improved the obsolete Polish Bombe decryption machine by discovering a design flaw in the Enigma encryption device.

Rick Howard: Origin and history: the first bombe named Victory and designed by Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman started code breaking at Bletchley Park on 14 March 1940, a year after World War Two began. By the end of the war, five years later, almost two thousand mostly women, sailors and airmen operated two hundred and eleven bombe machines in the effort. The Allies essentially knew what the German forces were going to do before the German commanders in the field knew. Historians speculate that the operation at Bletchley Park shortened the war by years and estimate the number of lives saved to be between fourteen and twenty-one million.

Rick Howard: In "The Imitation Game" movie that debuted in 2014, Alan Turing, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, leads a diverse team to build "The Bombe," defines what artificial intelligence is, and invents information theory. The movie returns three times to this inspirational quote. "Sometimes it is the very people that no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."