
The American M-209 cipher machine (2012) - jgrahamc
https://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/2012/06/american-m-209-cipher-machine.html
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munin
There's a great story that Tommy Flowers tells in the book about COLOSSUS,
which is that when COLOSSUS was declassified and published (sometime in the
80s) almost nobody cared, because history had already been written describing
what the first "real" computer was. COLOSSUS used big networks of vacuum
switches to break the Lorenz SZ-40 ("Tunny") teletype crypto machine used for
high-level Nazi communications. Bletchley Park was very skeptical that
COLOSSUS would ever work, so Flowers (who worked at the post office research
lab) self-funded the work and told Churchill he could have the machine
finished in a year.

One person did care, though, and wrote to Flowers after reading about
COLOSSUS's design. He was a former Nazi, German Army crypto specialist that
told Flowers he had had basically the same idea for a code-breaking machine.
However, when this German crypto specialist tried to sell the project to
Hitler, he told Hitler it would take two years. Hitler vetoed the plan because
he thought the war would be over by then.

~~~
johnflan
Thats pretty amazing

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jgrahamc
I posted this because there's not enough written about the cryptanalysis of
Allied ciphers by Nazi Germany.

This NSA document provides further insight into Nazi German breaks during
WWII: [https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-
documents/eur...](https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-
documents/european-axis-sigint/assets/files/volume_1_synopsis.pdf)

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willvarfar
Here's another article summarizing the German breaks of M-209:
[http://www.jfbouch.fr/crypto/m209/german_break.html](http://www.jfbouch.fr/crypto/m209/german_break.html)

It mentions in passing that details of the breaks were sent over Enigma which
the allies were breaking, so they knew that the Germans were breaking M-209.

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univacky
Timely post - Tom Perera was a keynote speaker at the Vintage Computer
Festival - East the day this was posted (and Bjarne Stroustrup the next day),
and spoke on Enigmas but also discussed the M-209 and SIGABA. He had an M-209
with him, and there is also one on permanent display in the WWII Communication
Museum section of InfoAge, where the VCFE is held.

[http://enigmamuseum.com/](http://enigmamuseum.com/)

[http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-
east...](http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/)

[http://infoage.org/](http://infoage.org/)

