16 Enigma machines discovered at a Spanish Army Office: (translated by Google) http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.elpais.com%2Farticulo%2Fespana%2Farma%2Fsecreta%2FFranco%2Felpepuesp%2F20081011elpepunac_5%2FTes&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=es&tl=en
Cor, nice find. I wonder what the current market value for an enigma machine with all it's rotors and other bits and bobs would be.
Cor, nice find. I wonder what the current market value for an enigma machine with all it's rotors and other bits and bobs would be. Depends on which model and a few other factors. This may help: http://home.comcast.net/~dhhamer/enigma_p.htm
Wasn´t Enigma a Polish invention that French intelligence smuggled to the West after Poland fell, if I´m not mistaken, complete with the members of the designing team? If my memory serves me well, read about it in "The Ultra Secret" by F.W. Winterbotham.
Wasn´t Enigma a Polish invention that French intelligence smuggled to the West after Poland fell, if I´m not mistaken, complete with the members of the designing team? If my memory serves me well, read about it in "The Ultra Secret" by F.W. Winterbotham. No, you're either mistaken or reading the wrong books. (Winterbotham is not the best source, I'm told)
No, you're either mistaken or reading the wrong books. (Winterbotham is not the best source, I'm told) What´s the story then behind the Ultra machine, that it even appears in Franco´s inventory?
Very early Enigma machines were purchased by large companies who communicated with this device to avoid any industrial spying. Siemens developed these secret machines and it was only when the German Armed Forces were developing the Blitzkrieg tactics that a way had to be found to send secure transmissions by air. This led to the adoption by all the German Armed forces of the Enigma coding and decoding machine and the withdrawal from the civilian market. It was constantly updated right up until the end of the 2nd World war. Perhaps it is the early versions that were commercially available that have been found, or perhaps there was some connection with the German secret service? An Enigma in itself! Tom
What´s the story then behind the Ultra machine, that it even appears in Franco´s inventory? Ultra was the code name given by the Allies for all intelligence decrypts, including Enigma, during the war. Enigma was the name of a German machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages from the 1930s onwards.
Ultra was the code name given by the Allies for all intelligence decrypts, including Enigma, during the war. Enigma was the name of a German machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages from the 1930s onwards. I knew that... Sorry for the slight term mixup...
Think You're a bit confused here Tom. Like most inventions, several people arrived at a similar design around the same time. Patents for rotor cipher machines, were filed by Hebern (1917), Koch (1919), Damm (1919) and Scherbius (1918). However two Dutch navy officers Spengler and van Hengel constructed a rotor based machine in 1915. So it has nothing to do with Siemens. You are probably thinking of the Siemens and Halske teleprinter cipher machine, used by the German navy and air force - usually by land line so there were very few intercepts. This is a different machine to the Lorenz machine, for which Bletchley developed the Colossus computer to assist in the breaking. Incidentally Colossus has nothing at all to do with Enigma. It was the Scherbius design that eventually came to be developed into the German military machine. He had tried to sell machines to governments and banks from 1923 with little success. The patent rights were transferred to a company that was to become Chiffriermaschinen Aktien-Gesellschaft, in Berlin. The German military took up this machine the navy (1926), army (1930) and air force (1935). There were several commercial and military versions but only the German machines had an additional plugboard, added in 1930. Other machines were sold to Spain, Italy, Switzerland and probably a few other places. This German machine had 3 wheels, or rotors, that could be put into the machine in any order. Two extra wheels were added in 1938, so a choice of 3 wheels from 5 was possible. The Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski, in probably the greatest cryptographic break ever, recovered the unknown wiring patters of the German machine. Poland regularly read the German's military messages from 1932 until around 1938/9 the German key handling procedure changed and Poland was no longer able to easily read the messages. In July 1939, replica machines, manufactured in Poland, together with technical details were handed to French and British intelligence by the Poles. It is true that the machine was constantly updated with additional wheels to choose from (the navy had 8) and another installed wheel making it a 4 wheel machine. Unfortunately these changes were introduced slowly, in parallel with the current system and were hence broken by the allies almost as soon as they were introduced. The original 1930 wheels were still in use during WW2. The machines supplied to Spain were based on the 'K' commercial version, with 4 wheels wired differently to the German machines and without a plugboard.
Geoff, Thanks for clearing that up with a good post. Tom Tom, It actually gets more complex than that, I've forgotten more than I remember!
Geoff, Yes I was going from memory and my old grey cells must be failing. It is a very complex subject and easy to get bogged down. Do you know much about the German Crocodile system, which Bletchley Park, could not crack, towards the end of the war. If so I would be interested in corresponding. Regards Tom
Geoff, Do you know much about the German Crocodile system, which Bletchley Park, could not crack, towards the end of the war. If so I would be interested in corresponding. Tom Tom, Crocodile? New one on me. Nearest I can think of is 'Thrasher' which was a one time pad teleprinter cipher (Wehrmacht) and the earlier Sturgeon, which was the name given to the S & H machine I mentioned. Could not find anything in the key lists given in Hinsley
