What was the enigma machin?

Answer 1

The Enigma was a 3 or 4 rotor encryption device that looks like a typewriter, used for mechanically encoding messages by the Germans in WW2. Versions with 4 rotors, used by the Kreigsmarine, were harder to decipher. Station X, Bletchley Park, was where the British built a computer called Colossus, which eventually broke the codes used. Alan Turing was one of the chief codebreakers. One of the main reasons the codes were broken was that the machine would not use the letter to be encrypted as itself, i.e. the letter P was always anything but P.

Enigma means unknown, and that's what the machine was throughout most of World War II. The Enigma Machine was a cipher machine used by the Germans, and invented by Arthur Scherbius. Whenever a key was pressed, a current would run throught the various components and the first rotor would change. (if the rotor was on 15, it would turn to 16). This would make a light on the lamp board light up. If the same key was pressed multiple times, each time, the lamp would continue to change. In order to decipher the message, the operator would have to put the settings back to the ones that they had started out as. For example : if you typed, 'OK' and the letters 'PR' showed up with the rotor settings at 16, 19, 10, you would have to set the letter back to 16 -- because it would turn twice for OK -- and then type PR into the keyboard, to see the original message.