Talk:Enigma machine/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Surviving Enigmas

I saw survived Enigma in Museum of Science in Boston, Massachussets. Please someone add this info.

Thanks for the info; perhaps you'd like to add it to this wiki instead? There's too many Enigmas on display around the wolrd to list them all in this article. — Matt Crypto 18:17, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi-res Photo

I just came across this article and noticed that the NSA photo is fairly low-res. I have uploaded a hi-res photo that I have released into the public domain at Image:EnigmaMachine.jpg, and also a labeled version at Image:EnigmaMachineLabeled.jpg. K. Sperling 01:52, 2005 Apr 15 (UTC)

Great photo, and thanks for taking the trouble with the labels! — Matt Crypto 02:15, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comment

re. the following 'sentence' in the first paragraph: "Allied codebreakers (see Biuro Szyfrów, Poland and Bletchley Park, England) were able to decrypt a large number of messages that were protected by the machine before being broadcast by radio".

I do not understand how the messages were 'protected' by the machine... Could someone explain, or clarify the sentence? Duncan.france 02:02, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It would probably clarify the meaning of the sentence to replace "were protected by" with "had been enciphered on." logologist 04:12, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comment re. caption of image (1)

Caption starts: "Enigma encryption for two consecutive letters ...".

It might be useful to have an explanation of the greyed-out circuits in this illustration, e.g. (perhaps):

"The greyed-out lines represent possible circuits within each rotor, which are hard-wired to button contacts" (or are they bushes?) "on each rotor". Duncan.france 02:24, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

i think the recent changes are far too wordy, and even confusing/misleading. it's a diagram. would like to see it put back to 00:18, 2005 Apr 30. anybody interested enough can easily figure it out from the excellent article text, which the image is meant to illustrate, not replace. i was recently a first-time visitor, and i got it immediately -- probably better because there wasn't a bunch of extra text to parse. with the new text, i might actually have wondered briefly if the "A" always cycles between "G" and "C". SaltyPig 02:39, 2005 May 1 (UTC)

Enigma machine pic needed?

I think Image:Enigma1.jpg is not needed, as we already have plenty of images of the Enigma already. It's essentially a black-and-white version of the first picture — what additional information does it provide? Moreover, the image is non-free. I think the article would be better off without it. — Matt Crypto 17:44, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

It would be nice to have a pic of the Polish duplicate, though. I believe there is a Polish Enigma replica on display at the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London. Next time I'm passing through I'll try and get a photograph that we can use. — Matt Crypto 19:35, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Mathematical description

Isn't $P=P^{-1}$ (since the plugboard just swaps pairs of letters)? Also, permutations are normally written the other way, i.e. $AB$ is "A after B", not "A then B", so both formulas should be reversed. --K. Sperling (talk) 11:30, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your formatting touches on this article! Yeah, $P$ is its own inverse. I suppose I thought it would help people understand that it was going back through the plugboard "the other way" if I wrote the inverse sign, even though it's superfluous. Do you reckon we should change it? I believe you can write composition of functions in both left-to-right and right-to-left orders. The order in the article is the one used by Marian Rejewski in his paper on the Enigma, but we can certainly can write it the other way if you think it would be clearer for people. — Matt Crypto 11:50, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah you can of course write it both ways, and the left-to-right way is probably more intuitive for the casual reader. It does feel a bit odd if you're used to the way operators are stacked up in linear algebra though, which is right-to-left. Maybe we can expand the section a little, say that $P=P^{-1}$ etc., and link to some more of the relevant maths articles. I'll probably look into it next week. --K. Sperling (talk) 12:26, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Enigma Uhr (clock)

I added the Wehrmacht & Luftwaffe procedures and a small piece about the Uhr. However, a nice free available picture of the Enigma Uhr (clock) would be nice. Anyone?Dirk 18:15, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

There's a couple on display at museums in the US: National Cryptologic Museum and the Museum of World War II, although the latter is not open to the general public. Maybe we should put a request up on the request for photos page (wherever that is!). — Matt Crypto 16:35, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I've found one, courtesy of Austin Mills! — Matt Crypto 19:02, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Inline references

This article was featured a year and a half ago, but now looks a little underreferenced by current Featured standards. It'd be good to liberally add inline cites. — Matt Crypto 18:15, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Swiss Enigma K photo caption

What a superb article. Well done.

I would only suggest one small change: the word "submitted" in the caption for the Swiss Enigma K photo doesn't make sense; could it perhaps mean, "shipped" instead of "submitted"?

-elf

Thanks for your comments! I've tweaked the caption (and feel completely free to make your own alterations if you're so inclined). — Matt Crypto 13:40, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Schussel is the German (Deutsche) word for key....or in this case cypher.

Wehrmacht addition of rotors -- when?

The article now claims that Wehrmacht Enigma procedures went to 3 of 5 rotors in December 1939. I suspect that this datum is wrong, if only because the Poles were having serious trouble near the beginning of that year, but can't remember the correct one. My references are not available, so I'll just suggest that it might have been 1938 instead. Maybe someone knows, right off the top of his/her head? ww 08:31, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid I can't tell you off the top of my head (maybe it means I have a life? maybe...), but Hugh Sebag-Montefiore gives the date as 15 December 1938. — Matt Crypto 08:42, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

December 15, 1938: see, e.g., bottom of Bomba (cryptography) article. logologist|Talk 06:20, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Enigma key size

Does the following seem right?

Calculation of the number of inital settings would that be possible for an M4 enigma given 13 Stecker cables, 1 Each of the eight M4 Naval wheels (I-VIII), both of the UKW, and both of the greek wheels.

Wheel choice and position (main 3):  $8\times 7\times 6=336$
Wheel choice (greek) : $2$
UKW Choice : $2$
Ringstellung (all four wheels) $26^{4}=456976$
Inital postiton (all four wheels) $26^{4}=456976$
Number of combinations for Steckerbrett:$\sum _{y=0}^{13}{\frac {\displaystyle {\prod _{x=1}^{y}{n-2\left(x-1\right) \choose 2}}}{y!}}=532985208200576$
Total: $336\times 2\times 2\times 456976\times 456976\times 532985208200576=1495895333843842833367059922944$
which is a key size of $\log _{2}(1495895333843842833367059922944)\approx 96.9169239911$

67.76.242.36 01:28, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

first sentence phrase

The first sentence included a link to some context, and immediately allowed a reader to understand some context even without following the link. A small, but useful virtue, hence the reversion. Reactions? ww 05:32, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

It was Poles who cracked the enigma machine, time to rewrite the history books.

Stepping mechanism

I wanted to point to some errors in the picture of the stepping mechanism. The notch is wrong and a double step could never occure with the notch as shown in that picture. Also, the pawls are completely different.

Check out these:

Stepping mechanism

Inside the machine

I know my pics aren't picasso's ;-) Maybe someone with a good program such as Blender to create a pic and add it? Wapcaplet?

Dirk 18:01, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

66.82.9.54 17:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC) Hi everyone. I was thinking about creating a page about Amy Elizabeth Thorpe, but I don't feel like creating an account and am too lazy to do a good job of it anyway. She is only slightly involved with the cracking of the Enigma, but she did some other interesting intelligence work during wwii and I was surprised that I couldn't find an article about her. Any takers? http://www.historynet.com/culture/womens_history/3028046.html 66.82.9.54 17:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Surviving Enigmas

There's an Enigma in Finland in the Signal Corps museum [1]. Probably not notable enough to include in the article. --Mika1h 21:20, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Probably not. I really wanted to visit last time I was in Helsinki, but I didn't have the time. Apparently there's a bunch of other crypto gear there, too. — Matt Crypto 10:06, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Should known surviving Enigma machines be listed? I just found an army four-rotor machine with plugboard in the Occupation Museum in Guernsey. PaulJohnson (talk) 19:54, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

What is the function of the four-position rotary switch to the right of the rotors?

In photos, there is a four-position rotary switch to the right of the rotors. I can read a label that says "Batterie", so I presume this switch has something to do with the power supply. (Codebreakers by Hinsley & Stripp)

I searched the article and the talk page, but there doesn't seem to be anything about this switch or the power supply. Nor does the labeled photo indicate what the switch does.

Great article, BTW.

--Jtir 17:55, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

link down temporary?

I note that we have at least one link to http://www.armyradio.com/, which claims on its homepage that it is temporarily down. Is it time to remove that link?--12:14, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Citation for the judgement that Enigma codebreaking shortened the war by two years.

In "Codebreakers" by F.H.Hinsley and Alan Stripp, Oxford University Press 1993, Hinsley - the official historian of Britain's World War Two codebreaking - provides an introduction on "The Influence of Ultra in the Second World War" which addresses what overall impact Ultra had on the course of the war. On page 12 he states that - without Ultra - "it is not unreasonable to believe that, even if it had been given priority over the clearance of the Mediterranean, Overlord would have had to be deferred till 1946."

This seems to me to amount to a clear judgement that Enigma information shortened the war by two years.

John Covington

91.125.62.17 16:37, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Please Completely Cite Source References

Whereas I could go onto Amazon[.com], I think Wikipedia contributors can do better than a last name (e.g., Bauer) and year. Links are fine, but it's tacky to not have at least 1 full citation at the bottom of the page; it shows more respect to the author and the publisher.

And a minor side note is that a monogram exists on Enigma mathematics from the National Cryptologic Museum.

--enm 25 Oct 2007, 12:55 PDT —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.123.41.42 (talk) 20:00, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

With regard to the Bauer "citation", there was no disrespect intended to the author or publisher; the full details were omitted by simple (and in all likelihood my) mistake. — Matt Crypto 20:13, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Text to images / extlinks ratio

This is exceedingly low at the moment. We should not be exhaustively adding every single good picture of the device that we can find, nor should we be individually listing every good resource that can be found online in the references section. less is more. I'm going to work on aggressively pruning these to only the very best and most relevant. Chris Cunningham (talk) 16:24, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, perhaps; let's discuss what we could do without. It's not a bad thing to be richly illustrated as long as each picture serves a purpose. I don't think the "Enigma machine on display in Warsaw" buys us very much, for example. But the thing is, the majority of the pictures illustrate different variants or derivatives of Enigma, or highlight the component parts (like the rotors or the plugboard), or accessories (the printing attachment, or the Uhr). Regarding external links, I'm with you. I think we could lose the majority of the simulators, for starters. — Matt Crypto 17:08, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

The Rotors section has three high-resolution images next to it, and yet it's got a main article to itself (which contains them all anyway). We could lose all three, and move the rotor assembly image (currently next to the entry wheel section) up. And we have nearly ten example images of various models at the bottom; the best thing to do is probably to split off an Enigma machine models article or something. Chris Cunningham (talk) 20:38, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that we could probably lose some of the images of the rotors, because the diagram covers most of it. I'm not sure I'd agree with an Enigma machine models article because, in a sense, that's what this article is meant to be -- about the physical Enigma machines (rather than the associated codebreaking). Clutter is bad, but I think a strong point of the article at present is the fact that it's well-illustrated; I suppose I'm anxious we don't lose that. — Matt Crypto 22:32, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Spoken Word Version

Does anyone know how to properly read the math in section 1.7? Thanks Virtualetters (talk) 02:09, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I would say

E equals P R M L U to the minus one M to the minus one R to the minus one P to the minus one

and

rho to the I R rho to the minus I

and in the next equation I would say "open bracket" and "close bracket".

But it's a long time since I've heard this sort of stuff spoken. And, even of the people who can make sense of it written down, I dare say a good few wouldn't follow it if it was spoken! Thincat (talk) 15:46, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it might be best to leave this section out of the spoken version, or maybe just make a passing reference. I also made a couple of minor edits which might make it easier to read (feel free to reverse these if you don't agree). I could send you a recording of my reading the section aloud if that would help. A.C. Norman (talk) 10:38, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Enigma vs. modern decryption techniques

Can anyone tell me how good Enigma would be stacked up against a modern computer? J.delanoy^gabs_adds 01:40, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Enigma was attacked in part with the aid of assorted machinery, bombs and bombas among others, in several variants. These were mechanical beasts with electrical sensing (very clever too) and had a maximum mechanical speed. A modern personal computer could perform the same analytic analysis much much much faster. There's a scaling comment from Tony Sales at the Colossus (computer) talk page in which he calculates a scale factor for the Colossus (world's first digital, programmable, electronic computer -- 1942/3) versus a modern laptop. Not quite the same as bombes versus laptops (and they attacked a different cypher anyway), but the proportion was many hundreds of times. And the bombes were rather slower than the Colossus in any case.

So, to that limited extent, you have something of an answer. However, actually breaking Enigma messages required a considerable amount of contextual study (eg, which German units were assigned to which other units, or associated with this or that other unit, or had a special capability to do this or that, ...) by lots of dedicated staff, lots of linguistic skill from platoons of fluent German speakers, lots of current intelligence analysis from a stable of analysts, etc. None of which is really adapted to computers, old or new. But assuming that all the ancillary parts of the Bletchley Park operation were available, anyone would have been ecstatic to have even one modern computer available (with spare parts, of course, to keep it going). BP certainly would have been, and so would have the additional convoy crewmen who might have survived if more Enigma messages had been broken in a timely manner than were.

There is some Enigma emulating software available on the 'Net (some open source), so you have the potential, after some interesting fun getting it all to run properly, of actually testing it out yourself.

Hope this gave you a qualitative idea of the difference anyway. ww (talk) 04:33, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

It's possible to perform a ciphertext only attack on Enigma with modern computing, see http://frode.web.cern.ch/frode/crypto/bgac/index.html — Matt Crypto 07:20, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Basically what I was asking is, how easy would it be for a modern computer to crack Enigma? Like, how long would it take for a modern computer to decode a sentence, such as The quick, brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. , that was encoded with Enigma? J.delanoy^gabs_adds 15:25, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

It depends on a couple of things. 1) the exact variant of Enigma -- some are more secure than others, and 2) the length of the message -- longer messages are easier to break than shorter. (I would suspect that the "quick brown fox" message would be too short to break.) An attack published in 2005 (see above link) reported breaking historical 3-wheel Enigma messages with on the order of 100 characters using a few days of a single computer's time. Also, a online distributed attack on 4-wheel Enigma messages solved a couple of messages within weeks using the combined power of hundreds of computers. — Matt Crypto 17:13, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Paper Enigma Machine Link

I've restored the link to the Paper Enigma Machine in the Simulators section (it's been in this article since 2004). This link was removed by User:Wednesday Next (Diff for March 27, 2008) stating that links to web pages that had Buy Now links on them are against Wikipedia policy. I disagree with that. If you look at Wikipedia:External_Links the policy disallows:

Links to sites that primarily exist to sell products or services, or to sites with objectionable amounts of advertising.

In this case, the Paper Enigma page's primary purpose is to offer a free download of the Paper Enigma machine - an educational simulator for students and teachers. Only incidentally, is there an offer to purchase pre-printed copies of the Paper Enigma for a nominal fee (as a service to those that don't want to purchase heavy card stock to print their own).

That's why I think the link to the Paper Enigma should remain in the article. Note that it is one of the authoritative sites on the Internet about the Enigma machine (ranking #7 in Google for searches on "Enigma Machine"), and receiving about 3,000 views per month. Mike Koss (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 21:35, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to remove date-autoformatting

Dear fellow contributors

MOSNUM no longer encourages date autoformatting, having evolved over the past year or so from the mandatory to the optional after much discussion there and elsewhere of the disadvantages of the system. Related to this, MOSNUM prescribes rules for the raw formatting, irrespective of whether a date is autoformatted or not). MOSLINK and CONTEXT are consistent with this.

There are at least six disadvantages in using date-autoformatting, which I've capped here:

Disadvantages of date-autoformatting

• (1) In-house only

• (a) It works only for the WP "elite".
• (b) To our readers out there, it displays all-too-common inconsistencies in raw formatting in bright-blue underlined text, yet conceals them from WPians who are logged in and have chosen preferences.
• (c) It causes visitors to query why dates are bright-blue and underlined.

• (2) Avoids what are merely trivial differences

• (a) It is trivial whether the order is day–month or month–day. It is more trivial than color/colour and realise/realize, yet our consistency-within-article policy on spelling (WP:ENGVAR) has worked very well. English-speakers readily recognise both date formats; all dates after our signatures are international, and no one objects.

• (3) Colour-clutter: the bright-blue underlining of all dates

• (a) It dilutes the impact of high-value links.
• (b) It makes the text slightly harder to read.
• (c) It doesn't improve the appearance of the page.

• (4) Typos and misunderstood coding

• (a) There's a disappointing error-rate in keying in the auto-function; not bracketing the year, and enclosing the whole date in one set of brackets, are examples.
• (b) Once autoformatting is removed, mixtures of US and international formats are revealed in display mode, where they are much easier for WPians to pick up than in edit mode; so is the use of the wrong format in country-related articles.
• (c) Many WPians don't understand date-autoformatting—in particular, how if differs from ordinary linking; often it's applied simply because it's part of the furniture.

• (5) Edit-mode clutter

• (a) It's more work to enter an autoformatted date, and it doesn't make the edit-mode text any easier to read for subsequent editors.

• (6) Limited application

• (a) It's incompatible with date ranges ("January 3–9, 1998", or "3–9 January 1998", and "February–April 2006") and slashed dates ("the night of May 21/22", or "... 21/22 May").
• (b) By policy, we avoid date autoformatting in such places as quotations; the removal of autoformatting avoids this inconsistency.

Removal has generally been met with positive responses by editors. Does anyone object if I remove it from the main text (using a script) in a few days’ time on a trial basis? The original input formatting would be seen by all WPians, not just the huge number of visitors; it would be plain, unobtrusive text, which would give greater prominence to the high-value links. Tony (talk) 13:00, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Simulators links

I'm removing these again. If someone wants to submit them to dmoz then be my guest, but WP:EL is quite specific in that the external links section of an article should not be a willy-nilly collection of useful resources. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC)