Definition of "bombes" []

• Plural form of bombe. (noun)

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• "Her job was to set up large rudimentary computers called bombes to decode the German messages."
• "The computers were called "bombes", and were basically devices to spin Enigma rotors as fast as possible, trying out different keys while working on "cribs"."
• "The greatest single British contribution to the defeat of the Third Reich, and possibly the greatest British achievement of the past century, is known to us as Bletchley, the unprepossessing country house halfway between Oxford and Cambridge, where an eccentric team of mathematicians, musicians, and classicists broke what the Germans had with good reason believed to be the unbreakable codes of their Enigma machines, and in the process pretty well invented modern computing: the huge creaking and whirring "bombes" of Bletchley, running over endless patterns and permutations, were the forebears of your laptop."