VCF East: Enigma Machines In The Flesh

At the end of World War II, the Germans ordered all Enigma cipher machines destroyed. Around the same time, Churchill ordered all Enigma cipher machines destroyed. Add a few decades, neglect the efforts of Polish codebreakers, and make a movie about Alan Turing and an offensively historically incorrect love interest, and you have a mystique around these rare, innovative cipher machine.

At the Vintage Computer Festival East, I was privy to what is probably the largest collection of Enigma machines on the planet. The exhibit comes from [Tom] and [Dan Perera] of Enigma Museum. Right now, they’re they only place where you can go out and simply buy a real, wartime Enigma machine. The price? Well, there is a pair of million-dollar Apple I boards at VCF. The Enigmas go for about a fifth of an Apple I.

Most Enigma machines were destroyed at the end of the war by the most expedient possible means. This could mean throwing the machines into a lake, into a fire, or simply shooting them. Still, there are a few survivors, but most look something like this:

Fortunately, [Tom] and [Dan] restore Enigma machines. Their bread and butter comes from repairing battlefield finds, bringing them back to operational condition, and selling them. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but with the price these things fetch it is worth it.

Somewhat surprisingly, rotor-based code wheel technology didn’t stop advancing in 1945, and the Enigma Museum has the machine to prove it. There were two post-war Enigma-ish machines also on display, one from the Swiss, and one from the Soviets.

The Swiss NEMA cipher machine was first produced in 1947 and used through the cold war. This machine used four rotors and improved the Enigma design by irregular stepping of these rotors. This machine could also be connected to a teletype machine.

The Soviet efforts to reverse engineer the Enigma machine resulted in the M-125 Fialka cipher machine. This machine used ten rotors, with adjacent rotors turning in opposite directions. The Fialka was used by all Warsaw Pact countries until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Filed under: classic hacks, cons