A working copy of Rejewski's Cyclometer was created, which allowed breaking the Enigma code (video)

Hacking the Enigma code significantly affected the moveWorld War II and provided the Allies with an advantage that ultimately led to the defeat of Nazi Germany. A significant contribution to the process of decrypting the most complex code was made by Polish mathematicians, who had already read German encrypted messages several years before the start of the war. The Rejewski Cyclometer device, which became the predecessor of Alan Turing's Bombe machine, which decoded the top-secret code of the Nazis, was able to speed up the decryption process.

80 years after the creation of "Cyclometer", itsThey decided to restore the working prototype in Cambridge, which allocated funding for the project of the graduate of the University of Engineering Sciences Hal Evans. In connection with the occupation of Poland in 1939 by German troops, all samples of the "Cyclometer Rejewski" were eliminated, and the group of decoders was transferred to France, and then through Spain to Great Britain. Since then, more than 80 years have not been created a single working machine "Rejewski", but its scheme allowed Alan Turing to create the famous "Bombe", which finally broke the Nazi code.

Poles, actually the first to decipher the code"Enigma" was used for this invention of the mathematician Marian Rejewski, which is a complex semi-automatic device designed to calculate the "characteristics" for each possible starting position of the rotor of the "Enigma". In 1938 the Germans changed the design of the encryption machine and the Rejewski Cyclometer turned out to be useless, but the hacking ideology used by the Poles was later applied by Turing. The British special services did not involve Rejewski's group in the development of Turing, since during the evacuation through Spain the Poles were temporarily detained by the Spanish fascists and there was a risk of their recruitment.

Algorithm for breaking the German cipherThe Enigma device was developed on the basis of working with the first German encryption machines, which were used commercially in the 1920s. Later, all developments on the "Enigma" in Germany were classified and reoriented exclusively for military purposes. However, by this time, the Poles already possessed information about the structure and principles of encryption of the first "Enigma".

Marian Rejewski's decoder groupdetermined that the weak point of Enigma is the dependence of the code on the starting position of the machine's rotors. Despite 100 thousand possible combinations, using the observation of the German code change system, Rejewski was able to create a machine that allows decrypting the code that changes every day in a few hours. The competition between Rejewski's Cyclometer and Enigma lasted until the outbreak of World War II.

Creator of the working prototype of the Marian decoderRejewski, Cambridge graduate Hal Evans dedicated his dissertation for a master's degree in engineering to the work of a Polish mathematician. In his opinion, the created fully functional model of the cyclometer demonstrates the contribution of Polish encryption specialists to the Enigma hack, which was finally accomplished by Turing.