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By Rishaan Chowdhury
One of the biggest enigmas of the second world war was the use and the deconstruction of the Enigma machine. The Enigma machine was an incredibly complex cipher machine that led to the founding
of the, computer. Created as a commercial proposition in 1923 by the firm Scherbius & Ritter the Enigma machine was sold to various governments that used it most often to encrypt their
telegraph transmissions. Multiple governments used the Enigma machine, although the most well-known use was by the Nazi Government. This article will focus on how it worked and how it was cracked
during WWII.
The Enigma machine has a rotor mechanism that is powered by its battery or the vehicle that is in (By cord). Typically, one person enters the plaintext (The regular message) and another person
writes down the letters that light up on the machine. The Enigma machine has two aspects to it, the first one is the rotors. When a letter is entered into the Enigma machine, the rotors I, II,
III, IV, or V rotate. The Enigma machine has only three slots for rotors but comes with a box containing two more rotors. Based off a sheet distributed at the beginning of each month the
sender/receiver selects and inserts the rotor adjourning to the day’s code. For example, if the sheet said I, IV, V then the user would insert the rotors I, IV, and V into the three slots.
Each rotor has twenty-six (Corresponding to the alphabet) numbers in it (One thru twenty-six). The rotors are different since each had different spacing between the electrical contacts of each
number (E.g. one inch between one and two rather than two inches) thus altering the selection of numbe