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Visit the Enigma Machine site to encode your own secret messages and to see how the enigma machine worked!

The Enigma Machine
By Caitlin

Albert Sherbius first approached the German military with his idea for a cipher machine with  'rotating rotors' in 1918. The German navy liked the idea. It was better than other cipher machines because its rotating rotors changed the code with every push of a button. Without a similar machine, the code was practically unbreakable.

The German Army began buying the cipher machines and developing them. Soon after WWII began, the Germans were using it to send important messages in code. The Germans did this in case the allied forces intercepted them. They successfully withheld the deciphering of the enigma code for eight years.

But much to the Germans horror, the enigma code was not secure. After obtaining a package sent to the German Embassy in Warsaw, the Poles acquired knowledge of this secret operation. Factories began producing similar machines, and a team of three top mathematics students began interpreting the code. By June 1939, the Poles had successfully manufactured enigma machines for the French and English along with the decryption information.

Citations

Online Resources

Kallis, Stephen A. " Codes and Ciphers."  Radio Days. 22 December 2004 <http://www.otr.com/ciphers.html>.

Schwager, Russell. The Enigma Machine. November 2004 <http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~russell/classes/enigma/>.

Teitelbaum, Jeremy T. "Rotor Machines."  November 2004 <http://raphael.math.uic.edu/~jeremy/crypt/rotor.html>.

Images

Permission to use photograph of Enigma Machine and collection of is granted under the terms of the Privacy Act and Security Notice from  <http://www.nsa.gov/gallery/photo/photo00005.jpg>.

Permission to use photograph of Enigma Rotor Stack is granted  under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>.