Journey with Confidence RV GPS App RV Trip Planner RV LIFE Campground Reviews RV Maintenance Take a Speed Test Free 7 Day Trial ×
Open Roads Radio forum for Ham, Amateur Radio and RV camping


Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
 
Old 09-12-2015, 07:44 AM   #1
Radio
Administrator
 
Radio's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Fayetteville, GA, USA
Posts: 3,017
Default Book and Movie trivia

How does Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang relate to the James Bond books and Movies?

No Google. But you can go to the bookstore...

__________________

KU4OJ "Wade" Ships Captain, CFO, Chief Engineer
KG4DQQ "Kathy" 1st Officer, Navigator, Best Friend
2007 F-150 SuperCab - 2009 Rockwood 8280SS
Lot's of mostly Kenwood stuff

Radio is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-12-2015, 01:13 PM   #2
NN5I
Carl, nn5i
 
NN5I's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Tallahassee, FL
Posts: 1,441
Default

Easy. So how do they relate to Turing machines?
__________________
-- Carl
NN5I is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-17-2015, 03:34 PM   #3
ke0me
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: Ft. Collins, CO (mail forwarding)
Posts: 303
Default

Ian Fleming wrote both the James Bond series and the Chitty (etch) book.

Carl, you got me on the Turing machine. think it was an early computer device, but don't recall it in any of the books. Possibly Ian Fleming was associated with it?

Have a good day.
__________________
Dick KE0ME
Pam
Gandalf the White (miniature Schnauzer)
2014 Silverado 2500
currently don't own an RV
ke0me is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-17-2015, 04:26 PM   #4
NN5I
Carl, nn5i
 
NN5I's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Tallahassee, FL
Posts: 1,441
Default

The Turing machine, a hypothetical device that is the basis of all modern computing, was conceptualized by Alan M. Turing, who was one of the primary geniuses in GC&CS,the Government Code and Cypher School, Britain's magnificent code-breaking organization at Bletchley Park in WW2. Fleming worked with GC&CS too, and devised some cloak-and-dagger schemes for obtaining information about Germany's encryption practices (keylists, especially). Fleming really was a secret agent.

Fleming wasn't associated with the Turing machine, but he was (loosely) associated with Turing.
__________________
-- Carl
NN5I is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-20-2015, 12:15 PM   #5
ke0me
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: Ft. Collins, CO (mail forwarding)
Posts: 303
Default

wow, that's great info to know.
I've read about the British code crackers, quite interesting.

PS - since I assume that all the messages intercepts were CW, does the German language have any special characters that English doesn't?

Just curious, since I haven't seen any special characters on cw code sheets.
__________________
Dick KE0ME
Pam
Gandalf the White (miniature Schnauzer)
2014 Silverado 2500
currently don't own an RV
ke0me is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-20-2015, 03:32 PM   #6
NN5I
Carl, nn5i
 
NN5I's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Tallahassee, FL
Posts: 1,441
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by ke0me View Post
wow, that's great info to know.
I've read about the British code crackers, quite interesting.
I recommend Battle of Wits by Stephen Budiansky, as the most comprehensive, yet most readable, of the histories of code breaking in WW2.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ke0me View Post
PS - since I assume that all the messages intercepts were CW
Many were enciphered RTTY and a few other codes too, though most were CW.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ke0me View Post
does the German language have any special characters that English doesn't? Just curious, since I haven't seen any special characters on cw code sheets.
You've been looking at code sheets for English. German has many characters not used in English. Üü Öö Ää ß, for starters. But German CW allowed substitution of English letters for each of these (ue, oe, ae, ss). The Enigma machine used the English alphabet and didn't have any of these, so the substitutes were always used for Enigma encryption (in addition to using q for ch, which was optional in all German military practice).

Many European languages have various characters not used in English; I can't think of a single exception, even among those (like German, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, etc.) that use alphabets based on that of ancient Rome. Each of these languages has its own version of the CW alphabet. Taking Icelandic as a (non-European) example, we find a 33-letter alphabet, based on the Roman, but containing letters like ð æ þ and what look like accented versions of English vowels but are not (for example, á looks like an accented a but is actually a wholly separate letter with wholly different pronunciation).

Then there are Greek ΑΒΓΔ, Russian авшщзфылд, and let's not leave out Arabic and Japanese.

Japanese CW is an interesting case. The language of Japan has four separate official writing systems: Kanji which uses Chinese ideograms; Hiragana which is a phonetic syllabary in which each symbol stands for a syllable like "ka" or "shi", used for Japanese words; Katakana which is a parallel phonetic syllabary used for writing foreign words borrowed into Japanese, and Romaji which is phonetic spelling using English letters. Written Japanese in Japan is usually a mixture of Kanji and Hiragana.

Japanese CW had special CW characters for hiragana, but occasionally used Romaji. But Japanese military traffic also used a commercially-available code (the Chinese telegraph code) to represent Kanji.

I'll bet your "code sheets" had none of that, either.
__________________
-- Carl
NN5I is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-20-2015, 04:08 PM   #7
wa8yxm
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Mobile, on the road
Posts: 1,139
Send a message via AIM to wa8yxm Send a message via Yahoo to wa8yxm Send a message via Skype™ to wa8yxm
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by ke0me View Post
wow, that's great info to know.
I've read about the British code crackers, quite interesting.

PS - since I assume that all the messages intercepts were CW, does the German language have any special characters that English doesn't?

Just curious, since I haven't seen any special characters on cw code sheets.
As someone pointed out the messages were encrypted RTTY for the most part.. For those who do not know Teletype machines were co-invented. One of the inventors was German but he was a US citizen, Same as my Grandparents.

Germany stole the technology or purchased it before the war.

Germany had an unbreakable code.. To this day the code is, as far as I know unbreakable... WITHOUT THE KEY.. The code changes you see with every letter so even if you break it.. The next letter is encoded differently.. now there is a machine that both encodes and decodes the text IT knows how the code will change from letter to letter.

The British Code Breakers... Managed to liberate one from the Germans so they had the key... Which Hitler never knew. Kind of neat.
wa8yxm is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-20-2015, 04:16 PM   #8
Radio
Administrator
 
Radio's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Fayetteville, GA, USA
Posts: 3,017
Default

If you read Bond and Chitty you will find some interesting parallels...

The heroes, and the villains, have unique skill sets and privileges not given to ordinary people. Bond for instance can kill people without recrimination by his government. He masters all forms of athletics, flies airplanes, handles weapons, so on. And so do his adversaries.

There is an interest in fast, powerful cars that can do interesting things, like go underwater or fly.

Characters have interesting names like Moneypenny, Goldfinger, Dr. No.

There are workshops where interesting gadgets are made. The gadgets are integral to the story.

There are people to be rescued. Children or pretty women, sometimes en mass, as in "Her Majesty's Secret Service." Rescue of these folks are never of the original mission but are thrown into the plot to mix it up a bit.

Fleming did put a bit of himself into Bond. The cars, gambling, Royal Navy service and the whole business of being a spy he pulls from himself. The name "James Bond" was found by Fleming in an a magazine article by an ornithologist by the name "James Bond." Fleming adopted the name for his spy saying it was the most boring handle he had ever come across. His original concept of Bond was a boring, nerdy-geek sort that the stories happened to, yet manages to win by his intellectual prowess and of course those wonderful gadgets. Bond later evolved into the quick witted, ladies man/playboy type we see in the movies.
__________________

KU4OJ "Wade" Ships Captain, CFO, Chief Engineer
KG4DQQ "Kathy" 1st Officer, Navigator, Best Friend
2007 F-150 SuperCab - 2009 Rockwood 8280SS
Lot's of mostly Kenwood stuff

Radio is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-20-2015, 08:45 PM   #9
NN5I
Carl, nn5i
 
NN5I's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Tallahassee, FL
Posts: 1,441
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by wa8yxm View Post
As someone pointed out the messages were encrypted RTTY for the most part.

Germany stole the technology or purchased it before the war.

Germany had an unbreakable code.. To this day the code is, as far as I know unbreakable.

The British Code Breakers... Managed to liberate one from the Germans so they had the key.
Perfect score. Not one of those statements is correct.

If the technology you're talking about is the Enigma, it was commercially marketed after WW1, without much success, and was repeatedy sold to a series of companies before 1925, which is about when the German military began using it (as did Italy, Switzerland, and a number of other countries).

Though some German traffic was RTTY late in WW2, most of it was Enigma-encrypted text transmitted by hand using CW. Many police and SS units used hand-enciphred codes of various types, all rather easily broken. Enigma was much harder, especially after the introduction of four-rotor Enigmas in the German navy. But essentially all were broken by the Allies.

Germany had a few codes that in principle ought to have been unbreakable (one-time-pad systems), but these were badly used and most were broken by GC&CS and some by the US Army. Enigma was broken by Poland in about 1932, and Polish cryptographers built "Enigma analogues" that duplicated the function of German Enigma machines. That was a result of the astonishing brilliance of the Polish team's Marian Rejewski, a mathematician. The Poles gave the French and English complete information and examples of their Enigma machines. Later, intact German Enigmas of various models were captured, but weren't much use (except that the French and English cipher bureaus used captured Enigmas to communicate with each other after the fall of France).

Having the machines and knowing how they worked was the easy part. The hard part was knowing which of the many thousands of starting positions and steckering [read Budiansky to find out what that means] was in use when each day's traffic was encrypted by Enigma. This changed daily, and continuous extreme effort was required by the codebreakers to keep up. Different German units used Enigma very differently, and each had to be solved separately for each day.

Japanese encryption systems were much different, and some (especially the Army codes) weren't broken until about mid-war. Italian systems were mostly simpler (unsteckered) Enigmas, or sometimes easily-broken Hagelin machines somewhat similar to Enigma, and were easily broken.

Russian coding systems were often childishly easy. The English and Americans chose not to break them, mostly, because after all the USSR was an ally; but they knew from broken German messages that the Germans were reading Russion codes without much trouble or delay. That posed a dilemma: Whether to tell the Russians or not. If the Russians learned that we were reading German codes, they might say so, in their own easily-broken messages, and within days Germany would know too. That would be fatal, for Germany would then make and use better systems and lock us out.

You really ought to read up on this. Battle of Wits is inexpensive and is usually easy to find on eBay. And there are other books too, none quite as good as Budiansky.
__________________
-- Carl
NN5I is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-21-2015, 01:31 PM   #10
ke0me
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: Ft. Collins, CO (mail forwarding)
Posts: 303
Default books

wow, that was a lot of info to digest, thanks for the info.

sounds like I need to add that book to my reading list.

hope in comes on Kindle, as I dont have a lot of room for book storage.

As a totally off subject note, there was a book I saw in Florida called AC?DC which was about the standards war to adopt ac or dc for commercial peer in US.

didn't get it, but is on the list to get, sounds like it could be interesting also.
__________________
Dick KE0ME
Pam
Gandalf the White (miniature Schnauzer)
2014 Silverado 2500
currently don't own an RV
ke0me is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-21-2015, 01:44 PM   #11
NN5I
Carl, nn5i
 
NN5I's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Tallahassee, FL
Posts: 1,441
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by ke0me View Post
wow, that was a lot of info to digest, thanks for the info.

sounds like I need to add that book to my reading list.
Is your address correct as shown on the ARRL web site? I have an extra copy and would enjoy sending you one as a gift. Since you say you're short on storage -- as I am! --you can, if you like, pass it on to someone else when you're through.

Just verify for me that the address for ke0me is correct on ARRL. Sharing books is fun.
__________________
-- Carl
NN5I is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-21-2015, 01:51 PM   #12
NN5I
Carl, nn5i
 
NN5I's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Tallahassee, FL
Posts: 1,441
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by ke0me View Post
wow, that was a lot of info to digest, thanks for the info.

sounds like I need to add that book to my reading list.

hope in comes on Kindle, as I dont have a lot of room for book storage.

As a totally off subject note, there was a book I saw in Florida called AC?DC which was about the standards war to adopt ac or dc for commercial peer in US.

didn't get it, but is on the list to get, sounds like it could be interesting also.
Don't miss Tom Edison's statements about AC. They're a hoot. Edison was heavily invested in DC. I haven't read about that struggle as extensively as I've studied military history, but I've seen scraps here and there.
__________________
-- Carl
NN5I is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-22-2015, 09:08 PM   #13
ke0me
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: Ft. Collins, CO (mail forwarding)
Posts: 303
Default

If the address is in Ft. Collins, CO, then it is correct.

Thanks for the offer, I know a few others who would probably enjoy it also after I'm done.
__________________
Dick KE0ME
Pam
Gandalf the White (miniature Schnauzer)
2014 Silverado 2500
currently don't own an RV
ke0me is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-22-2015, 09:47 PM   #14
NN5I
Carl, nn5i
 
NN5I's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Tallahassee, FL
Posts: 1,441
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by ke0me View Post
If the address is in Ft. Collins, CO, then it is correct.
It is a Ft Collins address. I'll probably get it off Friday afternoon, when I'll visit the P O to check mail box.
__________________
-- Carl
NN5I is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-23-2015, 03:31 PM   #15
NN5I
Carl, nn5i
 
NN5I's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Tallahassee, FL
Posts: 1,441
Default

The check is in the -- uh -- that is -- the book is in the mail.

Track it
__________________
-- Carl
NN5I is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-23-2015, 07:28 PM   #16
ke0me
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: Ft. Collins, CO (mail forwarding)
Posts: 303
Default

thanks, I have alerted my daughter to let me know when it arrives.
__________________
Dick KE0ME
Pam
Gandalf the White (miniature Schnauzer)
2014 Silverado 2500
currently don't own an RV
ke0me is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

» Featured Campgrounds

Reviews provided by

Powered by vBadvanced CMPS v3.2.3

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 01:16 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
×