Sunday, October 20, 2013

Awesome videos on how the Enigma Machine worked

This is the best demonstration and explanation on the German encryption machine that I've ever seen.



And this is the best explanation on how Alan Turing and the team at Bletchley Park broke it.  I hadn't ever heard what the Enigma's fatal flaw was until I watched this.


7 comments:

SiGraybeard said...

I almost bought an enigma machine at the Dayton Hamfest a few years ago, but convinced myself not to. I was surprised to see them, but there appears to be a small group of hobbyists who like playing with them. With your interests, you ought to drop by some time.

Anonymous said...

Even though I suck at math, I have always loved the idea of playing with an enigma machine. This video reminds me why; it is much less about the math for me, than the art in patterns.

Interestingly, aside from the untwinned letter flaw, there was human error, which was, and is, IMO the greater codebreaker.

Anonymous said...

Ted, you might be interested in two books by David Kahn: The Codebreakers, first published in 1967 (that first edition, often referred to as the Bible of Cryptography, is now a collector's item, the updated 2nd edition was published in 1996 and includes analysis of public key/private key crypto), and Seizing the Enigma which goes into a lot of detail on the Enigma machine. It also references the successful Polish effort to reproduce an Enigma machine from their analysis of the math involved. The Code Book by Simon Singh, a general historical study of codes and codebreaking, also has some info on the Enigma.

RabidAlien said...

@NosmoKing: weren't the Polish mathemeticians able to re-create the Engima (or crack it) before Bletchley Park?

Borepatch said...

Nosmo, I have Seizing the Enigma. Excellent book.

Anonymous said...

@RabidAlien - Yes. The video BP linked to says 1932. I'd have to go back to Kahn's Enigma book to confirm that, but it sounds about right, and they kept improving their solutions. Fascinating story. The Poles were quite a few years ahead of the Brits; understandable because as Germany's neighbor they considered them much more strongly as a threat than the British did. Well before the start of WWII the Poles built their own copy of the Enigma from their mathematics research.

Anonymous said...

@RabidAlien - Yes. The video BP linked to says 1932. I'd have to go back to Kahn's Enigma book to confirm that, but it sounds about right, and they kept improving their solutions. Fascinating story. The Poles were quite a few years ahead of the Brits; understandable because as Germany's neighbor they considered them much more strongly as a threat than the British did. Well before the start of WWII the Poles built their own copy of the Enigma from their mathematics research.