WWII Enigma Machine: The Enigma Project

See this genuine WWII Enigma Machine in your school, university, or organisation!

The Enigma Project from Cambridge University is a presentation by Dr James Grime about the fascinating history and mathematics of codes and code breaking. From the Greeks and Romans to the modern day, including a demonstration of a genuine World War II Enigma Machine.

Cryptography is one of the most inspiring, exotic, and important applications of real-life mathematics.

For booking and more information see The Enigma Project website at http://enigma.maths.org

To my regular subscribers: this is an advert for the day job ;) Incidently, bad hair day! :(

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[11000010101]

i can't believe you studied one of these =O even touching it is cool =)

[singingbanana]

@11000010101 It really is 1557

[Error081688]

I know the Germans had a book that told them exactly how to set up the machine each day, but I am curious, did they reset the machine to that days settings after every message? It seems like it would be fairly easy to miss a transmission and then your machine would be off-set for the next transmission, but then resetting it every message seems like it would make it easier to crack. Do you know how they handled that?

[singingbanana]

@Error081688 The proper answer is; the chosen rotars and plugboard were the daily setting and were fixed all day. The rotar position however was called the message key and it was different for each message. The operator would pick three numbers/letters and send that in plaintext at the beginning of his message. He would then set his enigma machine to this setting, and then use the enigma machine itself to encode another three numbers/letters to be the secret message key.

[singingbanana]

@singingbanana The machine would then be set to the secret message key, and the rest of the message would then be encoded using the secret key. This means the operator sends six letters at the beginning of a message, the first three letters in plaintext. These should be six random letter, but sometimes the operators would use six letter words. So if the first letters were BER, you can guess the next letters are probably LIN. Or HIT would probably be followed by LER etc.

[dirtygurty4]

i thort you had already done a video on the Enigma?

[singingbanana]

Gone done another.

[Prolaxed]

I love singing banana!!!!!!!!!!!!

[MrBoulayo]

I want to touch it too!!! :-D

[heyandy889]

Came here via Brady Haran's numberphile channel. I really like James in those videos. @singingbanana This is insane! Awesome, man! I've seen many pictures of old pre-transistor computers, and even some videos. Very few show how the machines work. Kudos from me. Looks like you uploaded recently, so you've got a new subscriber. :o)

[farodealer]

this is a brillant video. It explains Enigma in simple terms. I am currently researching the HQ of the RAF Y (Wireless Intercept) Service at RAF West Kingsdown and this film is useful aid for my research as Ultra intercepts were intercepted at RAF West Kingsdown even though it was mainly R/T intercept station.

[happinesson]

where did get that precious box of machine? patiently explained..

[princezak25]

Amazing enginering.....simply genious

[dihnoman]

3 Germans watched this video.

[cosine303]

2 words... Tommy Flowers ... legend.. him and the bletchley lot smashed this..

[1p4142136]

Great job!

[mywaydesigns]

Thats AWESOME! :O what brains to make such a device!

[IcEye89]

Why are there only 10 pairs of letters in the first level of encoding? Maybe the other 3 wires were lost so there would be 13 pairs as we would expect in an alphabet with 26 letters?