Gizmodo
If you're not a cryptography or World War II nerd and you know anything about the Enigma machine, chances are you've read Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon, in which fictional characters work alongside historical figures like Alan Turing to crack the Axis codes and sink Nazi submarines.
Designed as a project to raise funds for museums, the Enigma-E DIY Building Kit is £119.99 from Bletchley Park and €130 from the Museum Jan Corver and comes with every component required to assemble machine. You will need basic soldering skills and some knowledge of electronics to figure out the circuits though. If that's too much money or too much technical know how, you can always try out the Paper Enigma Machine.
Enigma-E DIY Building Kit
Enigma-E Kit [Bletchley Park Shop]
Enigma-E DIY Building Kit (scroll down) [Museum Jan Corver]
Enigma-E: Recreating The Infamous Nazi Code Machine Electronically [Retro Thing]
Comments
As I mentioned in the Retro Thing post, the wooden case shown here costs an extra $100. The kit doesn't come with the retro keycaps, either, but those should be easy enough to plunder from an old mechanical typewriter.
they want over 250 dollars for a KIT!? cripes...well i would never actually buy this but i do find these things real nifty. always thought it would be cool if they made some sort of steampunk commercial version of it. Would be alot of fun for about 5 minutes if done correctly
Well, it's a rather sophisticated kit - all the mechanicals (the rotors) have been replaced with a nice alphanumeric set of displays. And being built out of modern components, it's a neat little device that shows the basics of encryption/decryption. Plus, it does the 4-rotor Enigma machines, which were uncrackable during the war (but 4-rotors were very rare - they used 3 rotor units for most communications (the "4th" rotor in the 3 rotor enigmas was the non-moving reflector). Of course, the other reason why Enigma was cracked was due to very poor security practices (user error) that compromised the security of the Enigma machines (they can be very secure... when used correctly).
Start a discussion:
Login with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?