Turing's Secret Wartime Project: Unveiling the Portable Voice Encryption System 'Delilah'
2025-02-04
After WWII's victory in Europe, Alan Turing's assistant, Donald Bayley, learned of a secret project: the 'Delilah' portable voice encryption system. Recently, a cache of Turing's wartime papers, the 'Bayley papers,' sold for nearly half a million US dollars, revealing Delilah's secrets. This compact, 39kg device used a stream of pseudorandom numbers to encrypt speech, its core being a Turing-designed key generator based on multivibrators—an incredibly innovative feat for the time. The papers reveal Turing's exceptional skills in electrical engineering, adding a new dimension to his legacy beyond mathematics and computer science. They highlight his prowess as a creative and resourceful engineer.