Reginald Victor Jones

From a Foreword, circa 1979 by Reginald Victor Jones

With some important help from the French regarding the nature of the Enigma machine which was being adopted by the German Armed Forces, a group of young Polish mathematicians set to work soon after 1930 to deduce the internal connections in its revolving wheels and their associated switching, purely from studies of the enciphered messages which it produced, and which were being transmitted by German units in the belief that they were completely secure. by 1937 the Polish cryptographers had succeeded first in working out the connections and then in deciphering German messages; they even designed a machine for the purpose. Some measure of their feat is provided by the fact that their British counterparts were still, two years later, some way from success; as I understood it, we were hampered by not realizing that although the Enigma machine had a keyboard with he same distribution of letters as a conventional typewriter, Q W E R T . . . the keys were wired into the machine in alphabetical order, so that A and not Q went to the first connection, and B and not W ;to the second and so forth. This, incidentally, accounts for the fact that while the original Enigma machine had a typewriter keyboard, the Polish reconstructions have one that is alphabetically arranged.

With war imminent, the Poles made all their work available to the British and the French ad so we were able to build upon what they had so brilliantly done. It would, of course, be wrong to give the impression that there was no more to do; the Enigma machine settings were changed very frequently, and each new setting had to be deduced. Moreover, the Germans introduced new wheels with different internal wiring, and each new development had painfully to be worked out. The feats of the British cryptographers in overcoming these later and greater difficulties were well worthy of the Polish act of confidence in giving us the benefit of what they had achieved.

"The Enigma War" by Józef Garliński,
New York : Scribner's 1980, pp. ix-x.

Bibliographic

Author Jones, R. V. (Reginald Victor), 1911- Title(s) Most secret war / R.V. Jones. Publisher Ware, Hertfordshire : Wordsworth Editions, c1998. Paging xx, 556 p., [32] p. of plates : ill., maps, ports. ; 22 cm. Notes "First published in Great Britain 1978 by Hamish Hamilton"--T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references and index.
[ Source : Los Angeles Public Library http://catalog2.lapl.org ]

Author Jones, R. V. (Reginald Victor), 1911- Title Reflections on intelligence / R. V. Jones. Imprint London : Heinemann, 1989. Descript 376 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. Note Includes index. Includes bibliographical references (p. [359]-364).
[ Source : New York Public Library http://catnyp.nypl.org ]

Author Jones, R. V. (Reginald Victor), 1911- Title Instruments and experiences : papers on measurement and instrument design / R.V. Jones. Imprint Chichester [West Sussex] ; New York : Wiley, c1988. Descript xii, 485 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. Series Wiley series in measurement science and technology Note Selected papers and lecture texts on instrument design, some with new introductory commentaries, which were previously published separately. Includes bibliographies and indexes.
[ Source : New York Public Library http://catnyp.nypl.org ]

Author Jones, R. V. (Reginald Victor), 1911- Title(s) Future conflict and new technology / R.V. Jones ; foreword by Walter Laqueur. Publisher Beverly Hills, Calif. : Sage Publications, c1981. Paging 96 p. ; 22 cm. Series Washington papers ; 88 Washington papers ; v. 9, no. 88. Notes "A Sage policy paper." "The Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. in association with the Institute for the Study of Conflict, London." Bibliography: p. 94-96.
[ Source : Los Angeles Public Library http://catalog2.lapl.org ]

Author Garliński, J�zef Title The Enigma war / J�zef Garli�ski Edition 1st ed Publisher New York : Scribner, 1980, c1979 Description xx, 219 p., [8] leaves of plates : ill. ; 24 cm Note British ed. published under title: Intercept Includes index Note Bibliography: p. 205-211 ISBN 0684158663 :
[ "Foreword by Professor R. V. Jones", pp. ix-x. ]

Author Jones, R. V. (Reginald Victor), 1911- Title(s) Most secret war / R. V. Jones. Publisher London : Hamilton, 1978. Paging xx, 556 p., [16] leaves of plates : ill. ; 24 cm. Notes Includes bibliographical references and index.
[ Source : Los Angeles Public Library http://catalog2.lapl.org ]

Author Jones, R. V. (Reginald Victor), 1911- Title(s) The wizard war : British scientific intelligence, 1939-1945 / R. V. Jones. Edition 1st American ed. Publisher New York : Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1978. Paging xx, 556 p., [16] leaves of plates : ill. ; 23 cm. Notes Includes bibliographical references and index.
[ Source : Los Angeles Public Library http://catalog2.lapl.org ]