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Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Enigma Machine

Posted by timothy on from the or-at-least-touching-it dept.

Adler writes: "A man has pleaded guilty to to 'handling' the stolen Enigma machine in the UK. Its a short piece, but says that some vital parts of the machine are still missing. A longer BBC News piece is here." You may remember when this was first stolen, then held for ransom, then recovered -- this is the mopping up part.

5 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. the missing rotors by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Dont they have a bunch of rotors but no enigma somewhere? Of the many enigmas made wouldn't there be some rotors left over?

    I know it's not the same as the entire recovered machine that was captured and used to defeat the natzi germany forces but like the crown jewels on display, noone will know they are fake or not the real ones.

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    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  2. Before we all start rewriting history again... by Rogerborg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Let's get it straight that Poland cracked Enigma and built working devices from scratch, long before Turing automated the the decryption process at Bletchley, or Matthew McConaughey recovered the secret Death Star plans from R2-D571.

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  3. 3 rotor Engima applet by nyjx · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Pretty cool on-line implementation can be found at John Hopkins Univ. Source code is available to.

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    .sig
  4. Re:Colossus by ktakki · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Now, if you want to talk about mechanical computers, what I *really* would like to see, if it's even possible, is a working model of Babbage's Analytical Engine. ;-) Probably not possible, since very few of his drawings survived, but it would still be fascinating to see that machine run .. bit offtopic, I'll agree, but thought I'd indulge ..


    In hardware or software?

    k.
    --
    "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
  5. On a related note by MSBob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There is a movie about Enigma out now in the UK. Unfortunately the movie is all fiction and gets many of the facts horribly wrong. One of the movies misrepresentations is "forgetting" that it was Polish scientists who first broke the Enigma encription and not the British. The other (which is quite disturbing) portrays one Polish guy as a traitor who tries to tell the Germans about the success of breaking Enigma. The movie caused a small scandal in Poland and will almost certainly hurt those remaining Poles who fought in the battle of Britain who still live in the UK and are now being portrayed in such ways. Bad Brittons! Bad!

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