Queen to unveil Bletchley tribute

www.bbc.co.uk...

Cannot seem to find any pictures of a German enigma machine (that's the encrypion device) with special characters on the keyboards. Any reason for this?

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[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f2eb32216a1f.jpg[/atsimg]

The German Enigma was a field authentication cipher that served its purpose fairly well. Chances were good that if a radio message was received that had been scrambled properly with an enigma machine the message was authentic. One chief advantage of the Enigma was that you didn't have the huge problem of distributing and keeping track of key material.

The Germans also had unbreakable one time pad ciphers at least from 1923 on that Bletchley could never crack.

users.telenet.be...

And possibly even advanced one time pad teletypewriters such as the T-37.

www.jproc.ca...

So there is a conspiracy here, at what level did the German command consider using unbreakable encryption?
Some of the U boats must have carried one time pad systems rather than the breakable Enigma machines.
I think there may be some errors in the history books about this subject.

Originally posted by Bordon81
I think there may be some errors in the history books about this subject.

There's bound to be, the winning side always looks indestructible in the history books. In school, they taught how the British managed to crack the codes and win the war but barely mentioned how some codes were never able to be deciphered.

Only good thing is, in our history books we never pretend every war was won thanks to our incredibly late and unnecessary intervention by walking in, telling the opposition not to bother because we're now on the scene and then watching the enemies cower in fear and run like the US likes to think about itself

Although Alan Turing and the code breaking always seem to get the limelight at Bletchley Park there was probably a lot more being done there. For many years after the war men were not allowed on the grounds, who knows what kind of secret think tank could have been in operation. Maybe the Queen will shed some light this time around.

reply to post by Bordon81


My point here is that keyboards do not have umlauts, sharp s keys etc. The pictures of the enigma machines do not have these symbols on the keyboards at least . Enigma machines were apparently manufactured from 1923 with these keys. If someone were to break a code I would think you would need these keys aswell.