Abstract :
Without the Heath Robinson codebreaking machine, British intelligence may never have gone on to crack the codes of German cipher machines during the Second World War. The machine was developed jointly by the General Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill and the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE), and was used to decode the messages sent by the German Lorenz SZ40/42 machines, which were used by the Germans for strategic and higher tactical information which was too important for the less secure Enigma machines. Due to its appearance the machine was named Heath Robinson after the cartoonist and illustrator William Heath Robinson, famed for his humorous drawings of absurd mechanical devices. Despite its humorous name, the Heath Robinson machine played a vital role in the history of cryptoanalysis.
