Enigma Machine (Part 1)

Resources

• Slides

Video Script

In this module, we’re going to take a look at one great example of the use of cryptography in computer science. And to do that we have to go all the way back in history to look at World War Two. This slide right here shows the height of German occupation of Europe during World War Two. And during that time, the Germans were sending encrypted messages to all of their field commanders using a system that was very, very much thought to be uncrackable at that time. So we’re going to take a look at what that system is, how it works, and how the Allies were actually able to crack it by taking advantage of some of the knowledge that they had about such a system. Oh, and of course, some of this information would have been very much top secret, and a lot of it was classified up until just a few decades ago. So it’s really an interesting time to take a look back at what was going on during World War Two, and take a look at how the Germans were able to build a very interesting encryption system that was then later broken by the allies. So let’s start by taking a look at a quick video demonstrating the German’s Enigma machine and how it worked.