Harold Keen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harold Hall Keen (* 1894 in London , † 1973 in Croxley Green ), called "Doc Keen" , a British was an engineer , who from the 1930s, chief engineer of the British Tabulating Machine Company (BTM) was and during the Second World War there the Headed the development and manufacture of the so-called Turing bomb . It was an electromechanical deciphering machine with which the British succeeded in breaking the Enigma rotor key machine used by the German military to encrypt their secret communications . His habit of carrying tools and documents such as construction drawings with him in a conspicuous doctor's case earned him the nickname "Doc Keen" .

Life

Harold was born in Shoreditch , east London, in what is now the Borough of Tower Hamlets . At the age of 18, in 1912, he joined the British Tabulating Machine Company based in the neighboring district of Kentish Town ( German "British Tabulating Machine Company " ). There were under license from American Tabulating Machine Company , which later became the global company IBM , which was created by Herman Hollerith developed Hollerith machines manufactured. At the same time, Keen began studying electrical engineering . After an interruption caused by the First World War - he served with the Royal Flying Corps in northern France from 1916 - he resumed his work for the BTM in 1919 and one year later moved with her to Letchworth , a town around 60 km north of the British capital the county of Hertfordshire . Shortly afterwards, BTM began developing and manufacturing its own electromechanical machines. Two years later, Keen was appointed head of the testing department and in the following years became one of the most recognized developers of tabulating machines in the country, filing over 60 patents. In the 1930s he was promoted to chief engineer at BTM .  

At the beginning of the Second World War, in 1939, the British government entrusted Harold Keen with the management of the production of the cryptanalytic deciphering machine devised by the English code breaker Alan Turing on the basis of the so-called Letchworth Enigma . The first prototype of the Turing bomb , called Victory ( German "Sieg" ), was completed by Keen and his team of twelve employees in the spring of 1940. The device was then successfully used in Bletchley Park (BP), England, to decipher German Enigma radio messages. After by Gordon Welch Mans invention of the diagonal board ( German "Diagonal Board" ) has been considerably improved the efficiency of the machine, production was significantly increased. With the close cooperation of the cryptanalyst Welchman and the electrical engineer Keen, twelve more copies were made by the end of 1941 under the code name " CANTAB " and more than 210 bombs by the end of the war . Until the victorious end of the war, the machines, which were manufactured according to Harold Keen's design documents and production instructions, were used to break over two and a half million Enigma-encrypted German radio messages in BP . For his services he was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) .   

Harold Hall Keen had been married to Eva Burningham since 1919. He died at the age of 79.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Keen: Harold 'Doc' Keen and the Bletchley Park Bomb . M. & M. Baldwin 2012, p. 66. ISBN 978-0947712488
  2. ↑ Friedrich L. Bauer: Deciphered secrets. Methods and maxims of cryptology. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Springer, Berlin et al. 2000, p. 423.
  3. ^ Gordon Welchman: The Hut Six Story - Breaking the Enigma Codes . Allen Lane, London 1982; Cleobury Mortimer M&M, Baldwin Shropshire 2000, p. 11. ISBN 0-947712-34-8
  4. ^ Gordon Welchman: The Hut Six Story - Breaking the Enigma Codes . Allen Lane, London 1982; Cleobury Mortimer M&M, Baldwin Shropshire 2000, p. 81. ISBN 0-947712-34-8 .
  5. ^ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore: Enigma - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, p. 345. ISBN 0-304-36662-5 .
  6. ^ Kris Gaj, Arkadiusz Orłowski: Facts and myths of Enigma: breaking stereotypes. Eurocrypt, 2003, p. 121ff.
  7. ↑ Stephen Pincock and Mark Frary: Secret Codes - The Most Famous Encryption Techniques and Their History . Bastei Lübbe, 2007, p. 109. ISBN 3-431-03734-8 .
  8. ↑ Personal entry at the Library of Congress (English). Retrieved June 27, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Keen, Harold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Doc Keen (nickname); Keen, Harold Hall (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British engineer
DATE OF BIRTH 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH 1973
Place of death Croxley Green