The Spanish link in cracking the Enigma code (BBC)
By Gordon Corera
Security correspondent, BBC News
A pair of rare Enigma machines used in the Spanish Civil War have been given to the head of GCHQ, Britain's communications intelligence agency. The machines - only recently discovered in Spain - fill in a missing chapter in the history of British code-breaking, paving the way for crucial successes in World War II.
A row of senior Spanish military and intelligence officers stand upright in a line in front of a long elegant table in the country's Army Museum in Toledo. In front of them are two modest, slightly battered wooden boxes that are the subject of the day's unusual and high-powered gathering.
Inside they contain a key part of Britain's code-breaking history.
With their lids open, the distinctive black and white keypad and rotors of an Enigma machine used to encrypt communications can be seen.
Enigma machines, developed originally in Germany in the 1920s, were the first electromechanical encryption devices and would eventually carry the country's military communications during World War II. The cracking of that code at Bletchley Park would play a key role in shortening the war and saving countless lives.
***
more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17486464
An interesting tidbit from the history of cryptography -- with so much emphasis on the invention of the computers used at Bletchley, a reminder that a lot of the more old-fashioned variety of human ingenuity also was involved.
= new reply since forum marked as read
