Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The title refers to the French, British and Polish teams which worked on breaking the Enigma cipher, known by shorthand as "X", "Y" and "Z", respectively. The Enigma cipher, produced by the Enigma machine, was used from the 1920s to the end of World War II by Germany—later Nazi Germany—for military and other high security communications.
The German Enigma used a combination key to control the operation of the machine: rotor order, which rotors to install, which ring setting for each rotor, which initial setting for each rotor, and the settings of the stecker plugboard. The rotor settings were trigrams (for example, "NJR") to indicate the way the operator was to set the machine.
Before Rejewski started work on the Enigma, the French had a spy, Hans-Thilo Schmidt, who worked at Germany's Cipher Office in Berlin and had access to some Enigma documents. Even with the help of those documents, the French did not make progress on breaking the Enigma. The French decided to share the material with their British and Polish allies.
A German Enigma key list with machine settings for each day of one month The working rebuilt bombe now at The National Museum of Computing on Bletchley Park. Each of the rotating drums simulates the action of an Enigma rotor. There are 36 Enigma-equivalents and, on the right-hand end of the middle row, three indicator drums.
The Enigma machine was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I. [4] The German firm Scherbius & Ritter, co-founded by Scherbius, patented ideas for a cipher machine in 1918 and began marketing the finished product under the brand name Enigma in 1923, initially targeted at commercial markets. [5]
Marian Adam Rejewski (Polish: [ˈmarjan rɛˈjɛfskʲi] ⓘ; 16 August 1905 – 13 February 1980) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who in late 1932 reconstructed the sight-unseen German military Enigma cipher machine, aided by limited documents obtained by French military intelligence.
On 1 February 1942, the Enigma messages began to be encoded using a new Enigma version that had been brought into use. The previous 3-rotor Enigma model had been modified with the old reflector replaced by a thin rotor and a new thin reflector. Breaking Shark on 3-rotor bombes would have taken 50 to 100 times as long as an average Air Force or ...
A series of three rotors from an Enigma machine, used by Germany during World War II Exploded view of an Enigma machine rotor:1-Notched ring, 2-Dot marking the position of the "A" contact, 3-Alphabet "tyre" or ring, 4-Electrical plate contacts, 5-Wire connections, 6-Spring-loaded pin contacts, 7-Spring-loaded ring adjustment pin, 8-Hub, through which fits the central axle, 9-Finger wheel, 10 ...