13 Jun
2001
13 Jun
'01
3:08 p.m.
Actually, there was a guy with a booth outside at Dayton, and he
was demonstrating an Enigma machine (I think this one was
Polish...I know it wasn't of German origin) and you are pretty much
right on. The one he was showing was a 4-rotor version with the
two-way signal path. Pretty cool tech, even for today.
If you were there, it was in a double space, under an awning, and
his main thing was old telegraph keys.
Of course, like most of my answers to this list it
will likely be corrected later on, here's a quick
answer:
Keyboard (1 letter press +AD0- 1 signal line)
goes to...
-+AD4- Arbitrary plugboard (''fixed'' rotor)
-+AD4- Rotor: N signal points in,
N out in scrambled order,
angle dependant
-+AD4- Rotor, with diff. scrambling AND angle
-+AD4- Rotor, again
-+AD4- Light array (1 signal line +AD0- 1 Illuminable Letter)
The rotor as you may guess increments with each
keypress. Later improvements included a fourth
rotor and a reflection arrangement which apparently
allowed each rotor to pass the signal both to its
right AND to its left without ever having crossed
wires (neat). It would reach the far wall and then
be sent back eventually to the rotor origin. A wire
cross anywhere would cause non unique mappings, IE 2
letters out at once, which was designed out.
John IIRC.
Paul Braun WD9GCO
Cygnus Productions
nerdware_nospam(a)laidbak.com
"A computer without a Microsoft operating system is like a dog without a bunch of
bricks tied to its head."