🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec31.225705.8436@qualcomm.com> karn@servo.qualcomm.com (Phil Karn) writes:

   If you haven't seen an Enigma machine in the flesh, I recommend it.
   It really drives home the impact that the computer subsequently had on
   the entire field of cryptography.

Seconded.

   Among other places, you can find an Enigma in the British Science
   Museum in London and the Smithsonian Museum of American History in
   Washington (formerly the Museum of History and Technology).  I first
   saw the one in the British Science Museum. As I stood staring at it,
   lost in thought about how the subtle properties of that modest little
   box changed the course of human history, an English woman and her
   young son came up and also looked at it. "What's that, mommy?" "Our
   soldiers used that in the war to keep the Germans from reading our
   messages." Argh.

I saw the Science Museum model a couple of months ago.  To be fair to
the woman, there was a TypeX machine sitting right next to the Enigma.
Was the TypeX not on show when you were there?

(For the uninformed -- TypeX was the Enigma-like machine used by the
British later in the war.  So far as anyone knows, it was unbroken by
the Axis powers.

Paul
)
--
Paul Leyland <pcl@oxford.ac.uk>          | Hanging on in quiet desperation is
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