National Post (National Edition)
FIVE THINGS ABOUT HITLER’S CODE MACHINE
1 FOUND IN A SHED
Historians have discovered a cipher used by Hitler to swap top secret coded messages with his generals after it was advertised on eBay for $18.10. Volunteers from the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park tracked down the Lorenz machine to a home in Essex, where it had
2 BARGAIN PRICE
John Wetter, a volunteer at the museum, said: “My colleague was scanning eBay and he saw a photograph of what seemed to be the teleprinter. He then went to Southend to investigate further where he found the keyboard being kept, in its original case, on the floor of a shed with rubbish all over it. We said, ‘Thank you very much, how much was it again?’ She said ‘£9.50’, so we said, ‘Here’s a £10 note — keep the change.’ ”
3 UNIQUE MACHINE
The device is bigger, more complicated and arguably more important than the famous Enigma machine, as it was used to exchange strategic communications with army commanders. The teleprinter, which resembles a typewriter, would have been used to enter plain messages in German.
4 VALUED ARTIFACT
The messages were then encrypted by a linked cipher machine, using 12 individual wheels with multiple settings on each, to make up the code. “It is so much more complicated than the Enigma machine,” said museum volunteer Andy Clark.
5 IT’S IN THE NUMBERS
When the machine was taken back to Bletchley Park, volunteers found it was stamped with the official wartime number from the German army that matches the number on a different machine recently loaned from Norway.