The Enigma code, which was a very sophisticated cipher, was used during the Second World War by the Germans. It involved an Enigma machine, similar to a typewriter, where pressing a letter would make the cipher letter light up on a screen. The Enigma machine involved several wheels which connected letters with wires, determining which cipher letter would light up. All Enigma machines were identical, and knowing the initial configuration of the wheels inside was the key to enciphering messages. To make things harder, each wheel would rotate after a certain number of letters were typed, so the cipher was continuously changing within a message. German commanders had Enigma machines and would be issued lists of the initial wheel configuration to use for each day so that all the Germans used the same one and could decipher each other’s messages. Even when the Allies procured a copy of the Enigma machine they could not decipher anything, as there were over one hundred trillion possible wheel configurations to check. The Enigma code was broken by Polish ingenuity and perfected by the British using geniuses and computers. Knowledge of the German communications gave the Allies a vital advantage in the War, and from breaking the Enigma code, the ancestor of modern computers was born.
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Codes and Ciphers
RandomThe need to conceal the meaning of important messages has existed for thousands of years. Over time, people have found increasingly complex ways of encoding their messages as the simpler ways are decoded with greater ease. Contrary to layman-speak...
