The Enigma Machine and How It Worked

His first telegraph machine was made from household instruments that consisted of “an old picture or canvas frame fastened to a table; the wheels of an old wooden clock […] and a short circuit of a wire, embracing the helices of the electro-magnet connected with the positive and negative poles of the battery and terminating the mercury-cups” (Morse). His “apparatus” was so crude

Arthur Scherbius first released the Enigma for commercial sale in 1923, barely anyone showed any interest in the cipher machine. The first two models were heavy and they weren’t easy to use. He released two other models a few years later, which were lighter, and were not as hard to use. He started getting inquiries about his machine from different governments. The German military eventually took on his creation in the late 1920’s. Around 100,000 Enigma machines were sold. This is how the Enigma worked: The user would type in what they wanted to encrypt and there would be a light that popped up after each letter was typed showing the substitution letter chosen by the settings of the cipher and then they would record the letters given to them and then they would send the message. The receiver of the message would only be able to decrypt it if they had the settings of the rotors on

During World War II, the Germans used a type of code that is almost impossible to break. They used this code to communicate between each other and would get directions of where to go and also state where their locations are through that code. What made that code unique was the way that they used it. The way their code worked would be that someone would write a letter in a machine, and then the machine would print a coded version of the message. But that was not the worst part of it. At the end of every day, they would change the key to the messages, all at the same time in a synchronized manner. The way that the Enigma machine was built made it even more complicated to understand. “There are approximately 150,000,000,000,000 - that is, 150 million million - possible combination” (Claire Ellis “Exploring the Enigma”). Alan Turing started working in a

One of the most important needs for espionage was in the deciphering of the ENIGMA. [176] This was used to code and decode German messages sent and received between commanders and such. [176] It was very hard to decipher the ENIGMA because of the way it was set up. [176] What made it so difficult to decipher was the process by which a letter in an original message was transformed into a different one for the transmitted message. [176] The process involved, among other things, three motors in each machine that were chosen from a set of five. [176] Each of them had twenty-six settings, and a plugboard, which connected the keyboard letters to the lampboard letters. [176] For example the first time the L key was pressed a B might light up, but because the rotors turned further entries of L on the board would not produce another B but rather other letters. [176] US intelligence along with help from other countries was eventually able to make a duplicate machine that would help them in decoding messages. [177] Without help from espionage in this instance the US and their allies would be susceptible to unknown attacks and movements of armies without having a chance to

“the keyboard for inputting letters, the scrambler unit for encrypting the letters and the lamp board for displaying the enciphered letters” (Lendl). In order to break the Enigma Machine, the code breakers had to find the daily settings that the German used and understand them. However, it is important to know that Polish cryptographers already broke the Enigma machine in 1932 as Marian Rejewski reconstructed a replica of the Enigma i.e. Bomba machine. However, Turing used Rejewski’s ideas and improved the bombe machine so that the machine could go through all the possible combinations of the Enigma rapidly (Lendl). The polish Bomba inspired Alan Turing for the construction of his own Bombe machine. The Bombe machine was crucial for the breaking of Enigma’s signals. This machine is not considered as a computer and does not perform calculation, but was designed “to carry out a systematic search to determine the following components of an Enigma key: the rotor order, the ‘rotor core starting positions’, and some of the ‘steckers’” (Carter). Due to the work of the Bletchley Park codebreakers, the United Kingdom had access to the German communications and could predict future naval attacks, this allowed the prevention of several

The work of the British codebreakers at Bletchley Park in deciphering the German Enigma code was vital in giving the Allied navies the edge in the Battle of the Atlantic. In February 1942, however, the German code was improved, resulting in ‘the Drumbeat crisis’ when shipping losses were their greatest – until March 1943, when the German code was again broken.

The story took place in 1941 at Bletchley Park by the time of World War II. Alan Turing was working as a Mathematics professor in Cambridge University. He was an expert in solving the puzzles and he was hired by government to break the secret code, when Britain declared a war on Germany. Alan and other members formed as a team to break the secret code named as Enigma. Except Alan remaining members were breaking day to day codes they believe that this the only way can decode the secret codes. Mean while Alan working to prepare a

Begging with a decryption unit at a telegraph station in 1917 during World War I. The what was once named the Cipher Bureau of the Military Intelligence Division (MID), slowly

During World War 2 was a time of devastation. It was also a great time of innovation. One of the greatest innovations was the beginning of modern computing. During World War 2 encryption was each army’s main way of keeping war plans secure. One of the most famous encrypting machines was named the Enigma. The Enigma was a machine that took input from one side; encrypts it and sends the message to another operator who then translates it using a code book (Gladwin). Using this machine, the German’s kept nearly all the information secure from other countries. To break these encryptions, the British secret service along with many other countries started to build machines that could defeat the Enigmas encryption (Gladwin). Soon after the Germans

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When the rotors turn, the battery will be connected to a different bulb lighting up a different letter each time . If “A” is typed in once it may appear as “Q” but then if it is typed again it may appear as a “R”. This is all due to the turning rotors and the criss cross wires completing the circuit in a different way each time.To add to the complexity of the code the electriacal circiut is not sent though the rotors once but twice with the use of the reflector. The reflector basically takes the letter it was given after it went though the fist time of rotors and sends it back out as another letter and then that letter goes through the rotors again. After the electrical current went through the rotors twice it will go down to the plug board again. So if our initial letter of “T” comes back out of the rotor as “Q” the “Q” will continue down to the plug board and switch with whatever letter “Q” is matched with.The final result of this one press of the letter “A” could come out as ,for example, as “K”. Overall this may seem a little complex but this machine is just a basic circuit that with moving parts inside (Cipher

He used gold wires in water and sent messages two thousand feet way. This was a huge improvement on earlier methods of telegraphy. In 1792 to 1846 Napoleon Bonaparte used the non-electric Telegraph, which was invented by Claude Chappe. Smoke and light messages were sent from Chappe’s network of towers. It was a visual system, but it relied on good weather

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The concept of securing the messages through cryptography has a long history. The word cryptography stems from the two Greek words “crypto” and “grafein” meaning “hidden” and “write” respectively. Julius Caesar is credited with creating one of the earliest methods of cryptography system to send the message to his generals.

The term “Cryptography” was originated from Greek. In Greek “Crypto-” means hidden and “-grapy” means writing. Simply, cryptography means scrambling data so that it cannot be read or access by an unauthorized person. The ancient cryptographer Julius Caesar sent messages to his commanders by shifting each letter in his message to three places down in the alphabet. A was replaced by D, B was replaced by E and so on (Ciampa 186). This method of changing the original text into a secret message is called encryption and retrieving back to the original form is called decryption.