Mythology: What Is The Enigma?

Technology played a key role in determining the outcome of World War II. The high military demand for more advanced technology acted as a catalyst for the development of technology in the interwar years of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Scientists and Engineers alike poured massive amounts of research and development time into supporting the war effort, and more advanced technology was developed at an alarmingly rapid rate. One notable fact about technology in World War II is that World War II is the first war in which many military attacks were designed

No such war was so strongly affected by math and science then WWII. The earliest technological advancements created during world war II was by the Nazi’s and there study of rockets and rocketry. They created the V-1 rocket which is a predecessor to the modern day cruise missile. As well as the V-2 missile which is like a modern day ballistic missile that flies into space and drops onto the enemy(Digital History). These missiles guiding systems were some of the first electronic computers ever created which created a base on which people built off of to create the computers of today. Early control centers aboard ships pioneered the networked, interactive

During World War II, the U.S., Germany, and Japan we’re all at war. Germany expanding, Hitler rising in power, Japan fighting, and the U.S. At the start of the war, the bomb was not yet invented. People realized that one of the only ways to defeat the others in war was by large explosions, but nobody had that kind of technology yet. There was a task set for scientists. With the approval of president Franklin D. Roosevelt, they began the Manhattan project. This was the creation of the Atomic Bomb.

During World War II, the Germans used a type of code that is almost impossible to break. They used this code to communicate between each other and would get directions of where to go and also state where their locations are through that code. What made that code unique was the way that they used it. The way their code worked would be that someone would write a letter in a machine, and then the machine would print a coded version of the message. But that was not the worst part of it. At the end of every day, they would change the key to the messages, all at the same time in a synchronized manner. The way that the Enigma machine was built made it even more complicated to understand. “There are approximately 150,000,000,000,000 - that is, 150 million million - possible combination” (Claire Ellis “Exploring the Enigma”). Alan Turing started working in a

One of the most important needs for espionage was in the deciphering of the ENIGMA. [176] This was used to code and decode German messages sent and received between commanders and such. [176] It was very hard to decipher the ENIGMA because of the way it was set up. [176] What made it so difficult to decipher was the process by which a letter in an original message was transformed into a different one for the transmitted message. [176] The process involved, among other things, three motors in each machine that were chosen from a set of five. [176] Each of them had twenty-six settings, and a plugboard, which connected the keyboard letters to the lampboard letters. [176] For example the first time the L key was pressed a B might light up, but because the rotors turned further entries of L on the board would not produce another B but rather other letters. [176] US intelligence along with help from other countries was eventually able to make a duplicate machine that would help them in decoding messages. [177] Without help from espionage in this instance the US and their allies would be susceptible to unknown attacks and movements of armies without having a chance to

Enigma Machine was a secret code that was used by the Germans to direct ground-to-air

The work of the British codebreakers at Bletchley Park in deciphering the German Enigma code was vital in giving the Allied navies the edge in the Battle of the Atlantic. In February 1942, however, the German code was improved, resulting in ‘the Drumbeat crisis’ when shipping losses were their greatest – until March 1943, when the German code was again broken.

The reason as to why the Enigma Machine was a major objective and required a specific group of people to solve was because it dictated how the Germans communicated and was an extremely complex machine that only the most intelligent people could potentially solve. The Enigma Machine was a code-generating machine used by the Nazis during World War Two. What appeared to be a typewriter in a suitcase, the Enigma Machine had essentially 4 main components to itself: the keyboard, the lamp board, the plug board, and the rotors. The keyboard was arranged in a German QWERTZ layout. The lamp board was also arranged in the same manner as the keyboard, however with the lamp board, there were no buttons to press down on.

Begging with a decryption unit at a telegraph station in 1917 during World War I. The what was once named the Cipher Bureau of the Military Intelligence Division (MID), slowly

Encryption has been used for centuries as a way to obscure messages and hide information from prying eyes. Over the years, encryption technology has grown both more complicated and increasingly difficult to crack. One of the first electronic cryptographic technologies considered to be unbreakable was the Enigma encryption device, or simply enigma. Enigma was used by the Germans in World War II in order to communicate secretly and avoid eavesdropping. The Enigma machine was made up of a series of rotors and plugs that worked together to change the value of

Dr. Williamson Murray notes that, “only now, nearly forty years after the end of the Second World War, has the essential role and contribution of intelligence to the winning of [World War II] become clear. Central to the new evaluation of that importance has been the discovery of the fact that throughout the war the intelligence services of the Western powers (particularly the British) were able to intercept, break, and read a significant portion of the top secret message traffic of the German military. The dissemination of that cryptographic intelligence to Allied commanders under the codename Ultra played a substantial and critical role in fighting the Germans and achieving an Allied victory.” Indeed, it is said by some historians that the

It is undeniable the principal role, military intelligence occupied in both the successes and failures of the main events that transpired in World War II, ranging from the breaking of the enigma code at Bletchley Park, to the D Day landings that arguably determined the outcome of the whole war. Military intelligence in the war encompasses not only spies and counterintelligence but also radar, signal, weather and mapping intelligence. Having preemptive knowledge via military intelligence, enabled both the Axis and Allies to preplan their attacks with maximum efficiency; reducing casualties and achieving

As both the Allied and Axis powers desperately needed new innovations in medicine, transport, science and communications, technological advancements flourished. Pressurised cabins were introduced in 1944 to combat the risk of hypoxia , altitude sickness and barotrauma ; this innovation has vastly improved modern methods of travel. Another major advance that came as a direct response to the new weaponry of WWII was in medicine, as penicillin became widely used to treat bacterial diseases and war-wounds. Furthermore, the invention of the Turing-Welchman BOMBE that played a pivotal part in the breaking of the Enigma code, laid the foundations for modern computer technology. Similarly, the British invented the cavity magnetron that is now used in microwave ovens. Additionally, scientific advancements during the war lead to the ability to produce synthetic rubber , which is considered one of the biggest industrial developments of the 20th century. Hence, the technological advancements that came as a result of the war demonstrate that there was more than just meaningless

To crack the highly sophisticated German codes, Max Newman, a Princeton graduate who majored in mathematics, spent over eleven months designing and building the Colossus. A monolithic, humming machine, covered with an array of switches, the Colossus was the world’s first electronic digital programable computer. With over fifteen-hundred thermionic tubes, the Colossus ciphered German codes and neatly printed the top-secret codes on a long receipt. Then, with knowledge of the enemy, the coders would share the news to army officials. Even these coders were participating in the cause against Nazism.

The social changes that took place in the early stages of computer engineering largely contributed to war time efforts. Because of the Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930’s and 40’s, there was a need for technological advancements to help win the war. Decoding materials, and making precise calculations to aide in air strikes were huge factors in pushing technology forward. The German military was able to acknowledge Konrad Zuse’s talent, and dismiss him from solider to engineer. Thus laying a foundation for the future of technology to advance. Unfortunately the Nazi Regime was only interested in building technology that could immediately aid them in the war, and would not fund Versions of the Z2 Zuse aimed to build (Karwatka). However despite