Enigma machine

The Enigma machine was a family of electromechanical rotor cipher machines used chiefly by Germany and other Axis powers to encrypt military and diplomatic communications.

Rotor machine: A cipher device that encrypts text using rotating wired components to create changing letter substitutions. Enigma belongs to this broader class of mechanically changing substitution ciphers.
Arthur Scherbius: A German electrical engineer who developed and patented the Enigma cipher machine. His invention began as a commercial encryption product before military adoption.
Marian Rejewski: A Polish mathematician who reconstructed the German military Enigma's wiring and developed methods to read its messages. His breakthroughs gave Polish cryptologists a working attack before World War II.
Bletchley Park: A British wartime center where codebreakers decrypted Axis communications, including messages enciphered by Enigma. Its teams turned captured material, analysis, and machines into regular intelligence.
Cryptanalysis of the Enigma: The mathematical, procedural, and engineering methods used to recover plaintext from Enigma-encrypted messages. Its success depended on combining machine analysis with operational intelligence.
Enigma rotor: A wired rotating disk that maps each input letter to a different output letter. Its stepping changed the substitution after each keypress.
Commercial Enigma: The early Enigma machines marketed to businesses and government users for protecting communications. These civilian models preceded the military machines used during World War II.
Jerzy Różycki: A Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked on deciphering German Enigma communications. He contributed methods that helped exploit repeated message-key procedures.
Ultra: The intelligence derived from Allied decryptions of high-level Axis communications during World War II. Enigma decrypts became a major source of Ultra intelligence.
Bombe: An electromechanical device that tested candidate Enigma settings against logical constraints derived from intercepted messages. It automated a major part of Allied daily key searches.

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