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The Secrets of the Chaocipher Finally Revealed
nickpelling2 writes "In 1918, John F. Byrne invented a truly amazing cipher system, called 'The Chaocipher,' that fit inside a small cigar box, could be operated by a ten-year-old, yet produced practically unbreakable ciphertext (arguably even stronger than the Nazi Enigma machine). But now, thanks to the efforts of Chaocipher fan Moshe Rubin and the generous gift of Byrne's cryptographic effects by his daughter-in-law Pat Byrne to the National Cryptologic Museum, the secrets of the Chaocipher are finally starting to be revealed — it's a great story. To accompany Moshe Rubin's excellent textual description of the Chaocipher, I've posted a 30-second animation of the Chaocipher in action to YouTube, just in case anyone wants to see the most devious cipher of the 20th century in action (sort of)."
Yes, the Enigma algorithm, or actually wiring, was known and Polish and later English Cryptologists worked long and hard to crack it since a lot was at stake. This one as of now relied a lot on security through obscurity. I doubt it would have lasted long in a world war scenario.
Just as the Enigma it might be impossible to de-cypher it manually, but with a machine and Turing-level minds to help you I would think it is solved quickly. But since secure encryption is perceived as a solved problem (still, where is the AES equivalent of a secure hash?) maybe bright minds turn their attention elsewhere nowadays.