Robinson Developments
The original Heath Robinson was a prototype and was effective despite a number of serious shortcomings. All but one of these were progressively overcome in the production of what became known as "Old Robinson". However, Tommy Flowers realised that he could produce a machine that generated the key stream electronically so that the main problem of keeping two tapes synchronised with each other would be eliminated. This was the genesis of the Colossus computer.
Despite the success of Colossus, the Robinson approach was still valuable for certain problems. A further development of the ideas was a machine called "Super Robinson" or "Super Rob". This could run four tapes and was used for "crib" or Known-plaintext attack runs.
Read more about this topic: Heath Robinson (codebreaking Machine)
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—Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)
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