An Enigma Wrapped In a Mystery

My last post talked about an Enigma machine up for auction. But unless you are already a WWII geek (like me), you might not get what is so important about this thing that looks like a weird German typewriter.

Right, who else but WWII geeks are reading this anyway?

Well, I'm going to talk about it anyway.

Enigma was in many ways the last of its kind, the last encryption system from a time when a 'computer' was a woman (or rather a lot of women) in a room with a slide-rule. Enigma was the last great analog cryptography system.

There were many versions of the enigma machine made for business, government, and different branches of the German military in WWII. The British managed to crack every one through the efforts of such brainy types as Alan Turing at Bletchley Park. In the process, they invented the modern digital computer.

From those days on, cryptology became less of a game of cloak-and-dagger, less about the great brains attacking a problem as a matter of pentaflops.

Enigma Machine For Sale

Here's a piece of WWII history for the cryptography fans out there. A museum-quality original Enigma code machine is up for auction on eBay. I'm afraid my German is way too rusty (or rather never that good to begin with) to translate the details of the auction. Luckily for us monoglots, Boing Boing has an article on it as well.

While I'm sure that it will be easier to bring home this machine than it was for the Polish agents who first smuggled examples out of the Nazi Reich, you can still expect this auction to run to well over $10,000 US. Alas, outside of my price range.