[GreenKeys] Enigma machines

[John Nagle]

> Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:42:54 +0100
> From: "Craig Sawyers" <c.sawyers at tech-enterprise.com>
> Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] Fwd: GIZMAG & ENIGMA
>> Does anyone know of selling prices of Enigma machines?
>>
>> I seem to remember one selling for twenty thousand or so a while back.

    I've had the opportunity to operate an Enigma machine.
Someone had a museum's machine on loan, and they brought it by
Stanford about ten years ago.

    The thing has the worst keyboard feel of anything ever built.
You don't type on it, you push down keys with almost 1" of travel,
and you're pushing against heavy resistance.
The machine is powered by the key presses, which advance the rotors
mechanically.  The only electrical parts are contacts, lamps, and
battery.

    The reason it only has three rotors is that if they added more, the
key forces required would be hopelessly high.  There was a 4-rotor
Enigma variant, but that never caught on.  Machines with more
rotors were built, but they were motor-driven, not manual, and
the WWII-vintage ones were bigger than a Teletype model 15.

    They'd run into the limits of what one could build as a portable
mechanical device.

				John Nagle