One of only 3 "enigma machine" stolen; A piece of ENIAC was up for auction.

Well, mostly true. AFAIK the enigma series was a complete new design developed in Germany in the late 20's and put into service in 1930 for military and German embasys. There has been no prior swiss design. But of course there have been en/decryption machines of similar basic design (i.e. using wheels and gears). The Enigma code was based on 4 parts: a) The Wheels, the most esential part b) The Wheelposition - each of the wheels could be put on each position c) The Patch Panel - a whireing to interchange the code lines d) The Start Position. Prior to encoding each of this parameters has to be set. The start positions have been changed acording to a code tabel assigned individual for each station, sometimes even each message did use a different start position. Patch panel and wheel position have been changed in predefind intervals, while wheels have not been exchanged often - please not that these behaviours did change durnig the war. Until the war only 3 wheel types where produced. Before the polish 'borrowing', the machine structure has been a total secret and not knowing about the basic components and design a decoding was strictly impossible (at this time). In 1939 the British did know about the structure and about a set of wheels (AFAIK less than 6) and the general code scheme and the Warschau embasy code scheme (code scheme == setings and algorythm to change them according to message, date and sender). The wheels in question have been put out of service imidiate and the general code scheme has NOT been changed, just the interpretation. The Warschau table was of course irrelevant. This took several month, until all German dependancies have been changed (Remember, the production was top secret and so the capacity to produce wheels was limited). A short time later the 4 wheel system was introduced - first for military only use. Due their luck (and the Polish 'borrowing') the Britisch now knew about the machines structure and the possibilities, so they had 'only' to generate possible setings and check them. Of course they where able to gather more informations about code schemes due spys and traitors, so cracking was a posibility. Also code scheme changes where often initiated due coded messages in special formats - so cracking these messaged did help to go around. Of course German counter inteligence did not rely soly on the basic machines - as time advanced, more add on coders have been developed. The Enigma coded messages have been send thru other devices with different schemes and settings. The first of these add ons where to be 'conected' manuals, say one had to type it in again, later on they where connected due the patch panel and eventualy the Enigma did get special output lines for add ons. Especialy for the U-Boot fleet several extraordinary machines have been designed. Due their long of port time additional security was a must. For the records, Bletchley Park did not decode _all_ variants used during the war - but they did a prety good job for most of the stuff. The key was luck and a lot of good work. The Swiss come into this only way after the war, when they did build teir NEMA system, a direct follow up design of the Enigma, enhanced and looking complete different. They also sold a lot of machines of this design to other countries. But not only the Swiss did 'clone' the design - almost any country who could get hands on one of the machines did clone them (keep in mind that Germany did supply them until some degree to alies). Especialy in South America, Enigmas derivates have been in une until the late 70s. East European countries did use electromechanical designs also until the mid 70s to early 80s, but beside the basic principle these machines had nothing in common with their ancessor. Cute page, and most stuff correct and very fine done - just one thing: the Polish did never 'break' the code - they did only raid the German embasy in Warschau and got a machine for about 3 days ... The time German forces needed to capture the city. They dismanteled the machine and did send all possible information to Britain. The machine eventualy was recovered by German troops. True, but still an interesting theme to search for. Althou it was mandatory for German coding stations to destroy the equipment in a way that it cant be recognized a lot of original German machines did survive the number directly after the war is said to be >1500 of >25,000 produced units. More than some microcomputers had ever produced :) Gruss H. -- VCF Europa am 29./30. April 2000 in Muenchen http://www.vintage.org/vcfe http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe