The Bombe: Allied Enigma Codebreaking Machine

Initially designed by Polish cryptanalysts, later improved by British and American efforts led by Alan Turing and others at Bletchley Park.

Allied cryptanalysts identified predictable words appearing in German military communications.

Germany, Italy, and Japan developed encryption machines during World War II when far outnumbered by Allied forces.

German military operators used pre-distributed key sheets to configure their Enigma machines daily.

Enigma’s designers intentionally prevented any input letter from encrypting to itself, believing this enhanced security.

German engineers continually modified the Enigma throughout World War II to increase its security.

The Enigma was invented by a German engineer at the end of World War I and adopted by German military forces.

German military Enigma operations failed despite having a mathematically strong encryption system with massive key space.

Cryptographers define key space as the collection of all possible initial machine configurations.

All mechanical encryption machines face fundamental limitations described by computational theory.

Fatigued German Enigma operators made a critical mistake by failing to select truly random initial rotor positions.

Rotor encryption technology represented the state-of-the-art cryptographic method during the early-to-mid 20th century.

British and American engineers laid a 4,300 km telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean in 1857.