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| an Enigma encryption machine |
Today's link: Of Codebreakers and Mechanical Giants, at Epoch Times:
The Enigma machines made their debut in short-lived peace, just following the first Great War. Enclosed in foldable wooden boxes, the devices featured series of protruding knobs and keys, resembling a cross between an antique typewriter and a laptop computer.
These were among the first ciphers, boxes capable of coding and decoding staggeringly complex communications. German electrical engineer Arthur Scherbius invented the Enigma machines in 1918, believing the banking industry would find them useful. He would find, however, the devices were too far ahead of their time.
What he had invented was one of the earliest machines capable of encrypting data, wrapping a message in countless layers of code and rendering it safe from prying eyes. The electromechanical device was created with a hope that machinery could create a code so complex that no human mind could ever crack it.
The Enigma machine and the various Bombe "computers" developed to crack the code, fascinate me.
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