See the article about this book at the Rutherford Journal online. Also see The Guardian (Jul 19, 2006). http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article030109.html
Once one of the best-kept secrets in British history, Bletchley Park has achieved near-celebrity status over the past three decades. The wartime headquarters of the Government Code & Cipher School has starred in a novel, a feature film, at least one TV series and any number of non-fiction accounts. Most involve the word Enigma and include a starring role for the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing. And indeed the story of how Turing and his fellow codebreakers deciphered the Enigma Morse code traffic that signaled U-boat movements in the Atlantic is undoubtedly one of the most inspiring in the history of the second world war. ( )

A very rich history of WW2 Codebreaking genii and their machines. Not an easy subject for most laymen but well worth slugging through to the very end. The book is a compendium written by a sizeable panel comprising for the most part the original codebreakers and their electronic engineering inventors. The appendices(12) are well worth penetrating. A mathmetician's delight if you are into statistics, linear algebra, linquistics and prime numbers. There is thankfully a good level of repetition as each author contributes his/her account of the methods employed. Enigma was but the first of the code breaker triumphs at Bletchley Park. The "Lorentz" machine is the main fish in this book and was known then as the "Tunnny Machine" The solution techniques to solve the encryption are well explored and the necessity for the Colossi machines is well established. A most interesting account is given of the daily lives as experienced within a country engaged to save its skin under very bleak and daunting conditions of total war. Clearly war is the cradleof invention and WW2 clearly propelled the west into the computer age that we take for granted in our lives today. This is a book that supports the belief thet victory was most improbable without the Colossi code breaking equipment first coming on-line. More detail on the value of the information garnered will need a separate volume yet to be written. ( )

Only in the past few years has the story of the Colossus computers and their use to break the German's WW2 Tunny encoding machines come to light. Unlike the rather well known story of the Enigma machine, the Lorenz encoding machine (code named Tunny by the Brits) was more complex and required far more effort to break. The effort to understand the process and then build the machines involved some of the great mathematics minds like Alan Turing, but also a number of persons who have stay in obscurity due to the British Official Secrets Act. Sadly the book itself is a collection of articles by numerous people involved in various ways and so is greatly varied in focus, scope and level of detail Often the same informaiton, like how the Tunny machine worked, is repeated several times by different authors. It is a difficult story to follow and the difficulties are continued by numberous appendices that often don't have enough explainations unless you can go back into the narrative and find the corresponding information. I've given it three stars because while for the casual or even more dedicated WW2 reader this books is a real struggle, those truely interested in the subject will find a rewarding amount of information. ( )

An interesting read.
Book cobbled together by author from a number of recent first person accounts and contemporary writings. Makes a very good case that Great Britain would have led the computer industry if it had not been for the stifling effects of the Official Secrets Act that prevented the world leading electronics and computing experts from using or sharing the knowledge that was developed around the Colossus electronic digital computer used to break the German Enigma codes and its relatives.
Winston Churchill's paranoia following the end of the war led to the destruction of the machines and most of the knowledge built around them - Hence the US led the development of digital computing technology.
Given the disparate nature of the materials Copeland uses, the narrative is disjointed and in places repetitive from several different points of view. This creates some difficulties for the reader, but on the other hand, it serves to support the authenticity of the story being told. ( )