Following EnigmaThe history of the most famous cipher

machine in the world

What was the Enigma?It was a series of electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines, created by Arthur Scherbius and produced since 1918.

The name „Enigma” comes from Greek word „ainigma”, which means „a riddle”.

Enigma was very fast. It was used for commercial and military usage.

How did it look like?

Decrypting EnigmaPeople worked to discover the mystery of Enigma from the early twenties until 1932.

The French, English and Polish scientists had a lot of difficulties with finding the way Enigma codes each message, because each letter was ciphered with another set of the letters from the alphabet.

Among the scientist were mainly the mathematicians and linguists.

In 1929 in the Polish town called Poznań a course of decrypting messages was organised.

Three Maths students: Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski took part in it.

The boys were very talented in Maths. They solved the mystery of Enigma after three years from the beginning of the research, in 1932. Since that time Polish government and soldiers were able to decrypt German messages.

When the Germans got to know that the way Enigma codes messages is not a mystery anymore, they decided to create new versions of the machine. They also tried to create new sets of cryptographs to code the information.

Since 1939 English and French scientists were involved into decoding Enigma’s messages.

The centre of decoding in Bletchley Park, Great Britain.

Thanks to the work of Polish, English and French scientists it was possible to read each message coded with the use of Enigma at the end of World War II.

Decrypting one German message took 1 – 2 days.

Where can you see Enigma?

• Poland – Muzeum Techniki and Muzeum Wojska Polskiego in Warsaw, Muzeum Wojska in Białystok, Muzeum Oręża Polskiego in Kołobrzeg

• All over the world – Munchen (Germany), Fort Meade (USA), Canberra (Australia), Bletchley Park (UK)

• Many Enigma machines are the possession of individual people

Enigma from Muzeum Techniki, Warsaw

The statue of Polish cryptologists, Poznań

THE END