Tutte's Statistical Method
The basis of the method that the Heath Robinson machine implemented was Bill Tutte's "1+2 technique". This involved examining two of the five impulses from the characters of the ciphertext tape and combining them with the same two impulses of part of the key as generated by the chi wheels of the Lorenz machine. This involved reading two long loops of paper tape, one containing the ciphertext and the other the chi component of the key. By making the effective lengths of the two tapes co-prime with each other, all possible start positions of the key sequence were tried, and counts made.
Read more about this topic: Heath Robinson (codebreaking Machine)
Famous quotes containing the word method:
“Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best 20-20 hindsight. It’s good for seeing where you’ve been. It’s good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can’t tell you where you ought to go.”
—Robert M. Pirsig (b. 1928)