The buildings that housed the US Enigma codebreaking effort in Dayton Ohio are slated for demolition. See this NY Times article for more details. There's also http://www.daytoncodebreakers.org/ and http://www.building26.org/

I found time this holiday season to assemble the Enigma-E device that I bought more than a year ago. The Enigma-E is a digital replica of the German Enigma machine used during World War II. It comes with the ability to simulate the rotors, ring settings, and the plug-board. It really does replicate the functionality of the Enigma.

My soldering skills were a bit rusty, but I was able to get it together without much trouble. There was a few malfunctions, but upon closer examination all the problems turned out to be loose connections caused by poor soldering. Fixing them was simple.

The finished product looks like this.  You may click on the image to see a larger version.


The long cable is there to connect the Enigma-E to a computer via the serial port. Once connected, you can type at your PC's keyboard and have the device encrypt or decrypt. It's a little simpler than using the keyboard on the Enigma-E, and more importantly it also records for you the output so you don't have to take notes.

In the manual, the authors present a test message to make sure everything is fully working with your Enigma-E machine. I set up the rotors, ring settings, and plugboard.  Then I entered this ciphertext into the Enigma-E:

HRQN SMAD LVIO DMMW JLKN
GSRJ VNLC IKGT MDRB IDAW
YLIK IFIF CMCG HRQN SMAD

The decrypted message came out:

DERFUEHRERISTTOTXDERKAMPFGEHTWEITERXDOENITZX

For those of you paying close attention, there is an 8 character header to the message (HRQN SMAD) that shows the Enigma operator how to set up the initial rotor state to decrypt the message. This header is not part of the message. It is also repeated at the end of the message.

Take out the X characters and you get:

DER FUEHRER IST TOT
DER KAMPF GEHT WEITER
DOENITZ

Or more plainly:

Der Führer ist tot. Der Kampf geht weiter. Dönitz

In English it reads:

The Führer is dead. The battle continues. Dönitz

This was a really fun project!

It is hard to overstate the quality of this kit. The device and the instructions are superb. The creators clearly love the subject material and brought their considerable electronics and writing skills to this project. If you have any interest in the Enigma and electronics, I highly recommend this kit. It does take some time to build, especially if your soldering skills were as rusty as mine were.  But the journey and end-result are worth the effort. Here is a link to their ordering page.

Now I just have to decide if I want to keep it in cardboard box, make one on my own, or buy one.