The WWII P forgot

[Paul Mackin]

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Gentle" <Gentle_Family at btinternet.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>

> When was the Bletchly park codebreaking thing actually made public? Would
P have been aware of it?

I've wondered about that but never actually looked it up.Earlier accounts of
wartime intelligence didn't mention it. It might have taken a couple decades
to filter into my own brain--beyond '73 wouldn't surprise me.  The Turing
biography of the early 80s certainly laid it all out. Wonder if there might
not have been a tendency to try to surpress the importance of codebreaking
in WWII.  The "gentlemen don't read other people's mail idea" (Stimpson?)
was strong. Interesting relation to the passage of GR about trading lives
for information. ". . . as if there's a real conversion factor between
information and lives. Well as a matter of fact . . . " Without nearly as
sinister a spine to it, some historians DO believe breaking Enigima
shortened the war measurably thus cutting down on the killing time.

Nice to be able to break bin Laden's code. PDP (pretty good privacy) is hard
and expensive to break.

P.