Inside Enigma: The Story of the Enigma and Other Historic Cipher Machines

The Department of Mathermatics presents a talk by Tom Perera on “Inside Enigma: The Story of the Enigma and Other Historic Cipher Machines”

The German Enigma cipher machine represented a dramatic improvement over all previous forms of encryption. It produced a continually changing substitution cipher output and formed the basis for all machine-encryption devices that followed. We will trace the evolution of the Enigma, explore its history and how it works, and examine the cipher machines that were developed after its introduction. Recent archaeological digs that have revealed clues to additional aspects of Enigma history will be described.