[Popular Mechanics] has an interesting article about Alan Turing’s nearly-forgotten speech encryption device. Codenamed Delilah, it was in many ways an early form of digital encryption. It was secretly developed alongside his most famous wartime achievement of breaking the encryption used by the Nazis’ Enigma machine; itself a remarkable device we’ve covered in detail in the past.
Delilah was developed at a separate location, and Turing worked with a young electrical engineer by the name of Donald Bayley who not only helped Turing implement design concepts and theory as practical circuitry, but took copious notes of their work and discussions. His documents went up for auction in 2023, a few years after his death, and they reveal a first-hand account of their work.
Delilah did the same job, but was portable and battery-powered. Delilah was three small boxes weighing around 39 kg, and it’s hard to overstate just how remarkable of a feat of miniaturization this was. However, by the time Delilah was wrapped up, the war was over and the project wound down without ever being produced or deployed in any meaningful way.
Encrypted communications is standard stuff today, but back then there was simply no need for a vocal encryption system in peacetime. The reason we know what we do today is thanks mainly to the effort Bayley put into documenting things. It’s yet another achievement by a man for whom life was far from being either easy or fair; Turing was prosecuted by his own government for “homosexual acts” and ultimately took his own life in the years following the war.
It again demonstrates that if the people involved don’t write things down while they know it, that knowledge can simply disappear. Sometimes people make the effort and the rest of us benefit, like with the Delilah project and also with the history of liquid rocket propellants — a dry-sounding topic that we assure you is anything but.
I was wondering how feasible it would be to replicate Turing’s efforts with 1970s-era discrete electronics. He only had vacuum tubes in his day!
I understand why you wouldn’t want to bring this up, but I think it’s important today to talk about Alan’s membership to the LGBTQ+ community. He was shortly engaged to a woman before confessing his homosexuality, and met a more long term partner about a decade later. Shortly after they met, the police caught on to their relationship, and in 1950’s Britain this meant either imprisonment or probation and chemical castration.
Alan Turing chose the latter option, leading to numerous ill effects including impotence. Due to this conviction and guilty plea, he was subsequently denied entry into the United States, and spent a year traveling Europe.
Turing ended his own life in 1954, merely 2 years after his conviction and chemical castration.
Turing provided us many advances that were not fully recognized in his day, I believe partly due to his homosexuality, and was only posthumously pardoned in 2014.
In today’s political climate I believe it’s important to remember that LGBTQ+ people have been around forever, and are behind every great invention in some form. Thank you for reading
We have (at least some of us) gotten more understanding of folks being different from the mainstream. I (straight white male) could not have been happier when MA passed our marriage equality law. And even happier when our new lesbian neighbours got married.
People are people, and love is love. We need a lot more love around lately.
It is also embarrassing for how long it took for the government to pardon him of his “crimes.” For those who don’t know – it was 2013.
One of the known side effects of chemical castration was an increase in suicides of people who had this process done to them. It was known in period, and now. Yet the government still supported it as a “treatment.”
It is an embarrassment to humanity that this was the fate of a man who worked towards saving so many people. Him and his team worked so hard towards stopping an actual evil and saving lives – yet he was sentenced to death by an ignorant and evil mentality.
Also a timely reminder that The Government isn’t your friend. Never has been, never will be. It will use you for its own ends without morality or remorse. Turing made enormous contributions that helped win a war, and after his time was up the government didn’t just turn its back on him, it actively persecuted him leading directly to his untimely death. The US government did the same with Oppenheimer, continuously persecuting him as a Communist for many of the post war years. I get all tin-foil hat but the Government doesn’t look out for you. What hope do you or I have?
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Your job “owes” you nothing. Your insurance company will attempt to nickel and dime you and screw you out of a settlement. Courts, police, etc. You are a means to an end. Take ownership of yourself the best you can- you can teach yourself to rely on .. yourself. Family to some extent, friends to lesser extent (they all have their own problems) but there are too many people that cannot wrench on a car or bike, cannot grow a head of lettuce or, sadly, cannot throw a punch to defend themselves. learn to hack it. sorry if this if off topic but self reliance seems a very HaD theme (I hope).
Your post was lovely and well written, BTW. Sorry I got side tracked.
Similiar recent story on ieee site
https://spectrum.ieee.org/alan-turings-delilah
The article came out few months ago but yesterday the “Real Engineering” YouTube channel had a video sponsored by IEEE Spectrum and the ad shown a page about “Turing’s secret DIY project”. So I can believe the HaD editor watched that ad at the end of Real Engineering’s video and got curious about that and read the article on IEEE Spectrum’s website, which, by the way, fortunately is not behind a paywall.
a somewhat related topic: you know how the allies were so awesome and freed all those innocent people in Hitler’s concentration camps? well, they only did that for people who were there for being an ethnic or religious minority. the homosexuals in concentration camps were rounded up by the allies and sent to proper prisons. you probably didn’t know this because it is rarely brought up, but it happened
So…. What did it so then?
Or is the actual implementation detail still encrypted?
🤣😄
it is still garbled
Donald Bayleys notes
So what now?
Argh, formatting. Again:
Donald Bayleys notes “went up for auction in 2023, a few years after his death” but he ” ultimately took his own life in the years following the war“
Turing took his own life after the war. Bayleys lived longer.
Yes, Bayley is to thank for the documentation of another achievement by Turing, who contributed so much but was appallingly treated after the war.
Phrasing was unclear, made less unclear now!