OT: An Enigma for sale

WOW. Imagine what England would have paid for that in 1939.

Reserve will be interesting. I'll keep any eye on it, thanks Martin.

Don...

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Serial OLED uses standard micro-SD memory cards.

USB Flash Drive interface for existing products.

EXCEEDINGLY cool. I wish I could justify the price; it will likely reach six figures. A complete set with matched serial numbers and all five rotors, I believe it was a Kriegsmarine edition but eBay has presumably removed the listing due to busybodies.

looks like it may have been a scam, has been removed.

what a pity, a nice lump of interesting history.

but I guess there are plenty of places to find a few pictures.

Don...

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Serial OLED uses standard micro-SD memory cards.

USB Flash Drive interface for existing products.

I think you might like this as well

martin

Not a lot. They had several at the start of the war. Enigma was commercially available before the war.

Having the machine in the first place let Bletchely know what the were up against and how to crack it. There was no humanly possible way to crack the code because of the variations.

The real key was the invention of computers. They had the power to break the code.

Had the Germans realised that we had a computer (or even what a computer was) things would have changed.

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Why would busy bodies have it removed?

It has more likely been removed due to the seller not being the legitimate owner.... Enigma are usually sold in specialised auctions and sales not on eBay.

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After watching that U-571 documentary I'd just like to say a big thanks on behalf of the Brits to you Americans for capturing that enigma for us - we'd been waiting ages for one of those.

You missed the Smiley

It was not the capture of an enigma but the code book. They had had an Enigma since the start of the war.

The real hero was HMS Petard who actually captured the code book.

Re U571

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The three-rotor edition was available pre-war, not the five-rotor. The plugboard was also a later addition, and the rotors were all military- specific (army, air force and navy all had different rotors at various times, and I believe only the navy implemented the plugboard. The commercial machine was significantly different from the military editions.

The five rotor was AFAIK the much later Naval system.

It appears all military had the plug board. Then it gets in to the number of rotors in the machine and the number of rotors issued to choose from.

Yes, they became so.

However I think that The Brits had the commercial Enigma pre-war (they were around from 1918 but picked up some military ones early on thanks to the Poles.

I have seen the surviving ones and Bletchely park and Deutsches Museum Munich

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I keep meaning to get along to Bletchley. They have got a new computing museum open now -

- which is supposed to be great but then Bletchley is supposed to be a good day out anyway. My fiancée is into maths and cryptography and has always said she'd like to go. I really must make the effort.

Yup.

Again yup. The Poles did the real initial work of finding the flaws in the military Enigmas, and donated said work to the Brits and the French just prior to the outbreak of war.

In article , Tom Lucas writes

It is good there. I managed to get to the official reopening some years ago. It is the home of computing. Where they were invented. A pity the government did not do more to preserve it.

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Actually the people to crack it in the first place were the Poles - they escaped to the UK bringing all their knowledge & toys to Blechley.

I seem to remember there was also a bit of espionage to get a german military enigma also.

Glyn

Somebody was hoisted by their own... ? :-^

....

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In article , Paul Carpenter writes

No they drowned getting the code books.

It is partly for that reason the film u571 will never be shown in Tamworth, the home of one of the sailors who died getting the code books. The community and the town council told the local cinema not to run it. .

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"U571" was a typical example of Hollywood rewriting history. Any connection with the truth being purely accidental. The US owes Britain a vote of thanks for the Tizard Mission, in which the were given, gratis, the fruits of British research to that point.

I think it was a British documentary in which Alan Turing broke the German code and Got The Girl.

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David M. Palmer  dmpalmer@email.com (formerly @clark.net, @ematic.com)

When the NSA museum opened, there was one you could actually play with. (You weren't allowed to take the rotors out, but you could set the wheels and type on it.)

I think they eventually enclosed it in a case so you can now look but not touch.

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David M. Palmer  dmpalmer@email.com (formerly @clark.net, @ematic.com)