The Enigma Machine Explained

As technology increases, so do the methods of encryption and decryption we have at our disposal. World War II saw wide use of various codes from substitution ciphers to employing Navajo code talkers in the Pacific theater. Here, science journalist and author Simon Singh demonstrates the German enigma machine, a typewriter-like device used to encrypt communications. He demonstrates not only its operation, but both the strength and fatal flaws in its method.
Watch the Full Program Here: • Keeping Secrets: Crypt...
Original Program Date: June 4, 2011
The World Science Festival gathers great minds in science and the arts to produce live and digital content that allows a broad general audience to engage with scientific discoveries. Our mission is to cultivate a general public informed by science, inspired by its wonder, convinced of its value, and prepared to engage with its implications for the future.
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[@alexandrexavier3273]

Props to this guy for explaining such a complex theme in under 5 minutes. You could tell the excitement on his stuttering. So cool

[@innocentboi561]

yeah i can really tell a person is mindful of what his doing is when they feel excited explaining stuff

[@endone3661]

yea

[@thetooginator153]

Alexandre Xavier - I was thinking the same thing. I’ve seen videos and read about the Enigma, and no one has explained it as well as this fellow did.

[@ActionHeinz]

Guy in the yellow shirt: "Cool, I'm so close, I will see everything!!!" Box opens... Guy in the yellow shirt: "Ah fck..."

[@pothulayamini993]

bingo

[@abdelhakwinston6200]

lol

[@AbsoluteAbsurd]

Lmao

[@RUSTY93]

@ActionHeinz Bahahahhahahahahahahhahaha so funny litterally blocks his head out

[@whatzitooyaa1599]

what minute?

[@gan9e]

the maths to decode all of those messages is quite a brain bender but fascinating all the same.

[@user-fr4cg2xj2w]

Eric Brian Breheny can you walk? Oh than you can run 100 miles

[@TonyStark-ir8ke]

Bro. And Alan Turing did it. What a genius. Unbelievable stuff.

[@hiimryan2388]

Teacher: no phones allowed in class Everyone in the back:

[@lalhruaitluanga1987]

The one who invented ENIGMA was Brilliant.... the One who crack it was GENIUS...

[@jhny95]

Hruaitluanga Zadêng how come ?

[@RAJSINGH-of9iy]

Solver - Alan Turing

[@FastFactsVerse]

Inventor was Arthur scherbius

[@felixmikkialmosttoasted3911]

Hruaitluanga Zadêng from my understanding the code was broke by capturing the setpoints of the enigma machine. So if put to “today’s” settings , not “yesterday’s” the machine would spit out the answer. Capturing the settings from the double agent or a captured soldier is how it was cracked.

[@johnscarceforpresident1647]

@Aidan Bavinton Bruh you don't have to be so mean

[@rzr2ffe325]

Damn I was interested where he was going and then the video ended :(

[@abdulrahmanalhamali1707]

This is a famous problem in encryption called "The Key Distribution Problem", you can continue by googling the name :)

[@TypicallyThomas]

@@abdulrahmanalhamali1707 Thanks mate. That's super helpful

[@codycbradio]

Singh's book, "The Code Book" explains the enigma and the decipherment of it pretty well.

[@wilfredv1930]

thanks

[@JamesSZN01]

It's actually incredible that Alan Turing was able to come up with a machine to crack this.

[@piotrb8434]

He didn't. He copied the Polish machine that Poles delivered to Britain in 1939.

[@frankpembleton4381]

@@piotrb8434 Actually he didn't copy it but built upon it. It was heavily inspired and the poles did lots of the work, but I imagine you are from Poland, because educationally every country tells its people what they want to hear about it. Alan Turing did not copy the Polish machine but used it as a foundation to break the new and improved ultra. I believe the early Enigma that Poland cracked had 3 rotors, so the amount of daily setting was around 15k, whereas Ultra had a front cable board and 5 rotors therefore had about 158, 900 million million settings. You are right, the Poles cracked the basic prewar enigma but it was not copied by Turing, but expanded on.

[@GreasyBelcher]

That was a thoroughly decent presentation. Clearly explained quickly.

[@chasyamila]

watched the imitation game yesterday...and i still curious with the operation of enigma

[@6400loser]

Finally! A very straightforward explanation, thank you ^_^

[@rosskaske6357]

nice presentation. straightforward and to the point

[@ahmedusmanazeem7528]

This machine is work of a genius

[@BaSsGaZ]

Not one genius, multiple ones.

[@a-a-ron4711]

Yes, the ability to create an encryption machine that's virtually impenetrable is certainly amazing, but I feel like the ability the crack the code of it is far more remarkable in my opinion.

[@volfgankamei5348]

@@a-a-ron4711 The settings of the machine was leaked and that's how it was decoded. It's not that hard to solve when you have the blueprint of the machine. But if they somehow decoded it without having the information of it's settings now that would be impressive.

[@a-a-ron4711]

@@volfgankamei5348 really? i don't think that's true, i might fact check it though

[@volfgankamei5348]

@@a-a-ron4711 The Polish first cracked the code in 1934(I guess) and after that the Germans made a few changes to the machines. But during the war Poland under the Nazis didn't have the finance and security to work on decoding the machine, however the polish shared some key information to the Brits on how to solve it.

[@joytekb]

Such a quality in explaining such complex machine action

[@etps4444]

I had to reference this video for an assignment. This is quite fascinating!!

[@asd36f]

The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney has an Enigma machine, and 20 odd years I was able to visit the storage area and have a closer look at it - as a WW2 buff, it was a great thrill!

[@abdirahmanidris290]

Theres one at Bletchley Park. I was lucky to type my intials into it. Very satisfying. Its worth £200,000 so its a valuable experience for both of us

[@samspencer582]

The Legendary Simon Singh!

[@mickelodiansurname9578]

But as we all realized watching the video what the ENIGMA did not do was repeat the same letter twice.... well not a lot...certainly not one in 26 times... And the problem with that is while you wouldn't know what the actual letter was..you would know what it wasn't you knew it wasn't the previous letter... You could have HELLO become RUESA but it would never be RUEEA (two E's for the L's) and you would also never see YEERV ....because it had a built in bias not to reprint a duplicate letter...... which sounds logical from the encryption perspective. But turned out to be a large hole in the encryption logic exploited by Turing's team.. it didn't lower the permutations a lot... but it certainly did tell you what the letter would NOT be... The main issue however was that German is a language and army and navy communications are such that the same TYPES of words will be repeated and hence the same types of non repeated letters will be repeated giving away most of not all of that days encryption key. But you still needed to wait on the first communication from the Germans that day...

[@user-sh5iu1lq6x]

Mickelodian Surname I like your explanation.

[@livingadreamlife1428]

....and several enigma operators began the day by using the same greeting everyday. One used Heil Hitler! Once enigma operators became familiar with each other, they also gave themselves nicknames that were repeated. This made the process much easier to set the codes, as Betchley Park could figure out perhaps a third of the letters using this method. This lax behavior was a factor that German enigma creators didn’t factor in their security.

[@arnavshukla2408]

@@livingadreamlife1428 Where do you find this intel? I am getting really into cryptography and radio telecommunications, and would love to know where I can find more comprehensive information. Thank you!

[@toddkes5890]

@@arnavshukla2408 Check out wikipedia's "Cryptanalysis of the Enigma" page. One of the examples of user error was where a giant message came in, and it turned out the operator had just pressed the letter 'L' over and over. British cryptanalysis was very happy.

[@kaypee9187]

It is interesting that the code breakers could use the daily weather forecasts to derive the patterns to breaking the codes. The Germans used to send these messages in the same format and at the same time day after day. They needed a captured enigma machine to set the rotors for unscrambling the original message. The entire message could be decoded if a part of the message stream was decoded! Remarkable feat for the code breakers!

[@SIM2014]

Turing found a pattern given a specific scenario where a coder didn't bother to scramble something because it was repeated. Though, it was a specific transmission that became the turning point in the war, it was Welchmans idea of approach that made finding these patterns possible.

[@djkoch65]

fascinating!

[@severallybrianth6557]

Thank you! You have to admit that German did invent an efficient, elegant, way for encryption.

[@2adamast]

Compared to the M-209 (140000 build) it's clunky and lacks a printer

[@CharlesCoderre-yv1cu]

the enigma machine was designed in Switzerland

[@rebireh922]

This video is super helpful and the machine is incredible

[@JohnSmith-eo5sp]

The machine is only incredible in the context of the early 20th century

[@johnsamuel6096]

Good explanation

[@adam_p99]

I’m so glad England had Alan Turing. Genius.

[@piotrb8434]

Turing didn't break the Enigma. Polish mathematicians did in 1932.

[@adam_p99]

@@piotrb8434 nope. They lead the way but Turin cracked it.

[@piotrb8434]

@@adam_p99 Nope. Poles cracked the Enigma code in 1932. They were able to read the German messages 6 years before the creation of Bletchley Park.

[@frankpembleton4381]

@@piotrb8434 Yes, with the work of the Bomba. They first decrypted a code in 32 and by 38 had created a machine that could decipher every one instantly. But the Germans added 2 extra rotors and changed the design for the war which rendered the Bomba useless by 1940.

[@vikramk5412]

my master thesis about Enigma

[@jasonlinton9902]

What an amazing machine it was ahead of its time!!

[@alfonsoantonromero932]

Good video. Who was the greatest polymath and why Allan Turing or John von Neumann? Both great mathematicians, forerunners of computer science, logicians, with fundamental importance the last one in economics ...

[@colinmiller5502]

Gerry thought no one would crack this, Welcome Bletchley Park!!!

[@trebushett2079]

This man looks like he's been holding on to a van de graff machine - heavy handed too !

[@slawomirmalik4783]

In order to further secure what the Poles decrypted, it is necessary to write a security program because the Germans invented a preventive program (description). Enigma is not only a machine, but a forest and a wolf, and this system and forest are changing and this is the Enigma code.

[@blondedbythelight703]

This would be a good way to hide your thoughts and messages from getting into the wrong hands. It would totally scramble those mind reader's brains.

[@RoseSharon7777]

This takes more brains than I could ever hope for to understand.

[@jeanragusa4185]

it’s the front plate (plug board) that hugely increases the number of combinations. Et it is the reflector that enables the receiver to decypher

[@toddkes5890]

True. Just one of the cables multiplies the number of potential connections by 325 (26*25/2). The second cable multiplies the number of possibilities by 276 (24*23/2). The basic math is that one end of the cable has to fit into one of the remaining slots, the other end has to fit into a remaining slot, and since the cable can be reversed you divide that by 2. (You can't set up one of the cables as A-D and another as A-P.)

[@andreasschrader6925]

It is just a wonderful piece of mechanics & even so a wonderful piece of mathematics. Or in less words it’s a piece of genius.

[@JIMJAMSC]

Iirc way back in the 1st years of Ebay, one of these was up for auction off a U- boat. I collected submarine relics and remember seeing it. I remember the auction ended suddenly and I always wondered where it went. I assume because of the extreme rarity "7?" and value, the seller had no clue and was contacted by a museum, $$$ collector.

[@robinj.9329]

I've never seen one of these coding machines with only 3 disks! But it is "Pre-war". I've seen them with either 4 or 5 disks.

[@benderbendingrofriguez3300]

there are some rare ones with 8 disks.

[@topgears7775]

My first question was how advanced the German intelligence was during the WWII then I heard about this machine (in the “WWII in colour” series) ,so I came to here to know how it worked But now I have a bigger question, how they allies broke the codes when the machine itself was a classified German tech?

[@lawrence703]

I understood it to be a commercial product in use before the war and modified a bit by the Germans for the war.

[@toddkes5890]

Steal a machine, reverse engineer the rotors, exploit the key weakness (a letter could not be encrypted to itself), and take advantage of any operator foolishness? Read the wiki page about it "Cryptanalysis of the Enigma"

[@jextra1313]

So you just get a piece of paper that tells you how to set it up, and the code is decyphered? I'm sure it's not easy to get, but it's a lot easier than trying to guess what one of the infinite settings were used.

[@theravenflock6068]

6:34 it's actually 158,962,555,217,826,360,000 different combinations, just a fun fact

[@kevinskipp2762]

That's on the 5 rotor version. This is a pre war 3 rotoe version that had already been largely cracked by ww2 because it didn't have as many different ways of setting it up. So Turing wasn't trying to crack messages from a machine like this

[@adamryan5538]

where is the rest of this video???

[@Doctor_Straing_Strange]

Is it not annoying when people see your comment, like it, but do not answer your question?... Bye

[@Matowix]

I'm gona buy one of these on Ebay for a bargain price

[@rzr2ffe325]

Matowix $4,000 for a 1:1 reproduction last I checked

[@sanapalalakshmipathi]

WE need an example of Encryption and decryption of little message

[@JohnSmith-eo5sp]

Try a Bifid Cipher aka Polybius Square, with nulls

[@cameron6537]

This is way more advanced than I thought it would be

[@buzzardmusic5606]

Cameron Connell Same g

[@HailAnts]

He forgot to mention the reflector at the end of the rotors that sends the letter back thru a second round of encryption..

[@adityaadit2004]

So this is what Patrick's inner machinations of his mind

[@FUNTOURAA]

Alan Turing in imitation game explained the same... And now it makes sense.... But how he decoded by using his algorithm was still fascinating me

[@SirShoddrick]

The little boy that is there looking like he’s bored has NO idea of what he is close to, nor the amount of shear genius that produced it...

[@kittykatzcenteno7160]

The brain or brains behind this machine deserve to be known. As Alain Turing is.

[@AhmedWorlds]

Amazing :)

[@beagle7622]

The Enigma machine was a commercial machine it has been stated . The polish code breakers.had a couple, I got this info was a program about Bletchley Park" Please tell me if I am wrong!

[@lawrence703]

I understood it to be a commercial product too, used to pass trade secrets. I got this from a lecture some 20 or so years ago.

[@jorgebordon5131]

Estimados amigos la nota está incompleta, pues Enigma se usó en lo táctico, en lo estratégico se usó la "T 43" que nunca fue interferida por los aliados, fue tan secreta y eficiente que la siguió usando la OTAN. En Argentina tuvimos una en INALCO, Bariloche.(googlear).

[@AmirKhan-vx3mz]

The Washington Post new revelation of CIA's involvement or in other words owning of the Swiss crpto firm brought me here on 13th of February, 2020

[@insanelyawesam1420]

“Well, in this case, love just made Germany lose the whole bloody war.” And boooooom 🍺 This scene is never leaving my head! Just... Scintillating!

[@daredevil6145]

"Heil bloody Hitler" -Bangladesh Cricketmatch [2014]

[@rustycherkas8229]

Try to imagine that the real Turing hadn't considered this aspect BEFORE his machine was built and crunching, searching for meaning. Don't believe Hollywood... (And, Matt died on Mars in '000s of different ways... No return to Earth for Jason Bourne, either... Sorry...)

[@fastfact5500]

Greatest invention

[@JustHackingAround]

Where's the rest of the talk?.....

[@JustHackingAround]

I was about to like this comment, when I realized it was my own comment from a year ago ...

[@pandaa7551]

Just hacking Around woa dejavu

[@oiko2k4]

@@JustHackingAround hahaha! Happened to me a few years ago. And i was like, yeah baby, i cannot agree more with this guy, at last, someone spoke the truth! And it was me. Forever alone kind of stuff.

[@paultime2895]

I was trying to get a review of the bacchus/adonis rotor systems and the teletype tape python crypto systems.

[@ariexzionforkenfire8963]

Glyphtastic!

[@joelphilip2942]

i love it when they refer a cipher text as gibberish...

[@JohnSmith-eo5sp]

Or worse when they refer to the enigma cipher as a code machine

[@Sans_OO5]

great❤

[@cleo-subs]

enigma is my favorite band

[@Chrnan6710]

0:04 GUY FROM NUMBERPHILE! :D

[@chrisdixon892]

As terrible as war is, necessity being the mother of invention.

[@edgarermoso7476]

I might be the only person that came here after playing wolfestein: The new order. Idk man i was so curious about those enigma codes and now i see its real and i am blown away how interesting and complicated the machine is

[@ashakhadka9747]

I am here cause I just was watching The Imitation Game.. 😬 Had to understand what this is...

[@rebireh922]

Does anyone know the series Brooklyn 9-9 ? And if so- why does Gina Linetti want to name somebody after this machine? Help?

[@DoctorWhy777]

Crazy, I have always been interested in the enigma machine. Its genius fascinates me but not as much as the mathematical prodigies who realized that a letter never encodes to itself was the weakness in the system which undid it. I also love the Simpsons (hence my profile pic). And now i see Simon Singh (author of "The Simpsons and their mathematical secrets") talking about the enigma. Sweet :) p.s. grammar is not my thing and I don't care.

[@sharonfrith1964]

I think originally, it could. Then the Germans thought of turning the signal around and sending it back through the rotors the other way to further increase the combinations, not realising that this meant the letter would never encode itself. The earlier Enigma had already been broken but this just made it easier to break the newer version. I could be wrong though!

[@rustycherkas8229]

@@sharonfrith1964 The "Enigma Flaw" (no letter encodes to itself) allowed the codebreakers to chop out vast numbers of possibilities. Most of the effort of tackling 159x10^18 possible configurations is eliminating huge chunks of unknown "possibles" that are impossible (like 'A' ==> 'A').

[@loyalembilangpoklakpam8974]

Wow enigma machine

[@ad78]

Enigma Machine = Dream Theater

[@popin3able]

lol

[@bimalgautamgautam3178]

yeah man lmao

[@Skmax673]

Great Grandfather of computer.

[@TheHDReleaser]

pretty much, the encryption we use today in Whatsup / viber etc. this is just 80 years ago. Jesus. those guys knew how to use their brain

[@sheshaman]

Yeah.. millions of millions combinations of setting it, every day different code. But really unfuckingbelievable is the fact, the Polish people solved the codes and knew what Germans were typing to each other.. How Geniuses someone must be to done that, Jesus..

[@astudentpilotlife]

Was Alan Turing was the one that decided this?

[@AbsoluteAbsurd]

Yea

[@animepabu5526]

I’d like this dude to be my professor lol

[@jamesstancy9234]

hey kid, it cannot play GTA V

[@AbsoluteAbsurd]

Lmaoo

[@justplainbrad7713]

James Stancy In the 5 yrs since you typed that insult, the kid received his masters degree. What did you do?

[@amersaidat1905]

jUSTpLAINbRAD your mother.

[@justplainbrad7713]

@@amersaidat1905 That was such a well thought out & intelligent comment, I'm guessing you're in the mensa society. How else could one account for that much intelligence in one comment/reply?

[@justplainbrad7713]

@Fly solo 28 Read the originating comment, then read my reply, then have your wife explain just exactly what you read. You missed the point completely.

[@ruben3305]

I remember using an enigma machine in the PS game, Medal of Honor.

[@sheboygan47]

it is over my head.

[@Familysykes]

Nice to see Turing finaly recognised on the new £50 note on his birthday

[@JohnSmith-eo5sp]

Sure does help if you happen to be homosexual

[@frankpembleton4381]

@@JohnSmith-eo5sp What is that meant to mean?

[@frankpembleton4381]

@@JohnSmith-eo5sp I mean you could be joking but it's not that he was a 'gay icon' I think the queen felt bad because if her governmental laws (which in all fairness were used all around the world) did not condemn homosexuality then he would have lived for many more years and computers now would be way more advanced. If he could crack ultra in 3 years imagine what he could do with the rest of his lifetime.

[@archfive4157]

Amazing!

[@donfisher8035]

That's just three rotors. The Naval German branch used eight, and I think that was random too. But subs must have carried months of settings. Since it started as a business device, I wonder why, and likely patented in country of origin, where the patent laid. If Germany, than kaput, mein Enigma.

[@aeromodeller1]

Swiss patent. No secret. Not a difficult problem. The problem is to automate the very long and tedious process so the decrypt could be done quickly.

[@donfisher8035]

@@aeromodeller1 Polish made. Likely Polish perfected it. The patent explains the mechanical engineering, not how the rotors were set, or keys pressed, which changed monthly. Overall getting the common routine of sending a unique sequence meant Heil Hitler. Their fatal mistake. A daily reports about weather. A actual machine was a working model, like a real Ford V8.

[@aeromodeller1]

@@donfisher8035 I think the settings were changed daily. The daily settings were listed in a code book. Everybody using the machines had to have the same codebook.

[@donfisher8035]

@aeromodeller1 Monthly. Too arduous to get a code book with 364 daily settings. Codes were sent so often changing the wheels seemed simple, but the Germans thought monthly wasn't bad. Big mistake. Turing could see the patterns before the Bomb" had to be repeated. Different wheels, switch, faster data processing. Turing RIP.

[@spaarkingo102593]

That prudent boy is missing since 4:27 I suspect the involvement of the lady at 2:49

[@ericnilo24]

Who else here came from JaredOwen great explanation?

[@mohithsathyanarayanan7882]

gotta admire German engineering.

[@JohnSmith-eo5sp]

Germans build things to last!

[@Gixsir]

Wooooooow this dude could put an insomniac down for hours

[@SirThunderPants]

Someone please smack that kid and make him sit down.

[@jerryperry1788]

JustSomeGuy if i in there i will do this

[@kaiser98berlin]

JustSomeGuy What wrong has he committed?

[@AsUrbanipal77]

JustSomeGuy pre SK a CZ milovníkov histórie ponúkam kriticko-historický článok - svetový prvý súhrn o Enigme, vyšiel v časopise Historická Revue v SR v r. 2004: emiliadr.wordpress.com/category/enigma/ Dobré samovzdelanie prajem. Všimnite si kritický prístup historičky E.U., ktorá nedovolí americko-anglickým historikom prispôsobovať si dejiny na svoju slávu :-)

[@GamingLoadown101]

wow, so much hate on a child, shame on you! At least he's showing an interest.

[@knrtn439]

indeed, he was ugly as fuck

[@Page5framing]

So was the enigma machine reset after every message sent or received?? Is that how it worked??

[@toddkes5890]

It was originally set to the day's settings, then the operator would transmit out 6 letters that would show the settings for that message, then use those settings and send out the message. The problem is that the 6 letters meant it was two repetitions of 3 letters, so if you had enough messages you could figure out patterns in letter encryption. This actually allowed one Polish mathematician to figure out one of the Rotor settings (this was before the war, and the rotor settings were only changed 1/month). Next month when the Germans changed the right-most rotor, he used the same math to figure out that rotor as well. With two rotors figured out, he was able to figure out the third.

[@Page5framing]

@@toddkes5890 has anyone done a video on this? Did they reset the rotors after every message?

[@toddkes5890]

@@Page5framing Exactly right. Every message is started using the same daily rotor settings. If the daily rotor settings are ABC, then every message has the rotors set to ABC before encrypting that message. Check out various videos about "Enigma machine operations" here on KZbin

[@Page5framing]

@@toddkes5890 thanks. I have tried looking them up but only found ones that explained how it works. Not how you operate it daily. I’ll look again. Thanks!

[@jantrembczyk4990]

THE ENIGMA CODE HAD BEEN CRACKED BY POLISH MATHEMATICIANS DURING THE WWII.....

[@michaelmills4924]

That was just the 3 rotor version I believe.

[@cbm2156]

Did not seem to have done the Polish very much good since they lost the war to German in about six weeks? On the other hand, Poland was able to get a couple copies of their machines out to the UK who was able to use it to their advantage.

[@scottfuller5194]

NO....the "enigma" was a CIPHER MACHINE .......And it was used to encypher codes......after which that scrambled code was transmitted by morse code to the agency who was its addressee.....then, when received, that encyphered message would be input into their enigma, using the pre-set daily setting......when that was properly processed by the receiving enigma, that scrambled message would be returned to the form of the code that was first used......that would of course be in German........the enigma was the lowest level of German cipher machine, used by the German military (and other German agencies like its railway system, it's labour system, the SS and Gestapo, etc etc) for tactical purposes.....the enigma used 3 to 4 rotors and could process a code into two levels of encryption......the LORENZ SV 40/42 was the highest level of German cipher machine used by Hitler and the German General Staff for strategic level top secret communications for Command and Control to issue top level orders down the German command structure. It used 12 rotors and was 100 times more technically complex and could be used to scramble codes up to three levels of encryption and was mechanically connected directly to a teletypewriter system. The enigma operation required three staff to be used, one to key in the code with a specially daily setting, the next person to write down the lit up letters when the letters were first keyed in, the third person then to take that final scrambled text and transmit it by morse code, while the LORENZ cipher only required one person to key in the selected code into the LORENZ cipher machine, that then was automatically transmitted by the connected teletypewriter. When that encrypted text was received by the receiving Lorenz.....it was processed directly into it.....and decyphered (descranbled) from its encrypted form with the clear text processed directly into the teletypewriter into a clear (German language) text form. Note that both the enigma (tactical) and the Lorenz (strategic) cipher machines used several hundred different root codes during WWII, those being changed frequently, their cipher machine settings changed every day and their actual formats of those selected codes being also changed frequently. The German end users (military or other than military) each possessed different models and formats of enigmas and unless each had the daily codes/settings/code formats etc.....the scrambled messages that were received by morse code could not be decrypted by them. The codes used by each military service were frequently changed by each service and changes to the technical model or its variation were made by each service, however each type of enigma in use was subject to allied cipher analysis and each of them were, in turn, "broken" by the allies early in the war.....the enigma cipher machine was available for commercial purchase in the 1920's and 1930's and had then been successfully "broken" by the Polish Cipher Bureau, who then were able to "break" into the newly introduced military model of the enigma when German had adopted it for its army, Air Force and navy. In addition, the French Intelligence Service had been sold enigma intelligence technical information by a German working inside the German Cipher agency for cash payments.....the Polish mathematics cipher experts then had advanced their successful enigma cipher work until just before Germany invaded Poland......just prior to that event, the Polish experts hosted the French and the British Intelligence cipher experts and provided each with Polish replica copies of the German military enigma and a great deal of other enigma cipher intelligence including their successful work on their "Bomba", an elementary enigma cipher processing "computer".

[@gowdsake7103]

The Poles cracked the civilian machine to a degree and did give a huge head start BUT they had nothing to do with any military Enigma. They gave some of the basics they certainly saved time but in no way can that detract form what Bletchly Park did !

[@gowdsake7103]

@Kacper Jankowski That sir is I am afraid just plain bollocks !

[@ddeakpeti]

Have you noticed the encrypted message on the guy's left hand? :D

[@MentalArea]

it's just the default setting of the Enigma machine

[@daredevil6145]

Oh, the machine Benechryptic Calacysmtic built?

[@naimaaguous7193]

That kid behind him will probably become a mathematician hhhh

[@olddave5084]

This version has 159 billions of billion combinations (159'000'000'000'000'000'000). If you'd be to test 1000 different possible combinations in 1 second, it would least 5 billions years to get though all of them.

[@sixthkid6]

Why didn't they set up the machine on the stage?

[@MohamedAhmed-id1ed]

No better explanation of my question to Google: how the enigma machine works

[@joeblogs5163]

With the way most people txt now a days, it appears it is still being used.

[@AgusPcb]

Enigma ...yes now i understand

[@ajayg7845]

next show would be like " so you have a real atom bomb, and this bomb was made in ww2 "

[@radioboyintj]

How are the jumbled messages sent by the enigma machine diffrent from the cryptograms in the newspaper my grandfather solved everyday wherein one letter simply stood for another?

[@lawrence703]

Watch the video and you'll find out how.

[@toddkes5890]

Enigma changed the cryptogram on each letter. So you could have typed in 'AAAAAA' and get out 'BQRTCW'

[@radioboyintj]

@@toddkes5890 That doesn't make any sense

[@toddkes5890]

@@radioboyintj Enigma changes the cryptogram for each letter, but it changes the encryption predictably. The machine was designed so if both of them have the same starting settings, you can put in a good word and get out a jumble , then put in the jumble and get out the original word. A very basic version is letter replacement, where the first version has A replaced by N, B by O, etc. However, after each letter the enciphering wheel is advanced by 1 letter. So AAAAA is enciphered to NOPQR. The key is that the recipient is using the same machine with the same settings where it reverses the advancement, so they would type in NOPQR and get out AAAAA. Enigma is just a more advanced version of this.

[@davidgruen7423]

Where is ä, ü and ß?

[@bingesquad1]

6:31 159 million million million to be precise.

[@leoq4498]

WTF the video ends abruptly during the explanation!!!