How did the Enigma Machine work?

Jared, the only thing more incredible than Enigma was the amazing description of every part that you did. This was by far the most clear explanation I ever saw, thank you very much for doing it.

You've cleared up 30 years of confusion in 20 minutes. Just, wow.

One has only to admire the ingenuity of the German engineers who designed and built the Enigma machine. I knew it was complex, but not "that" complex. Also, you must be thanked and praised by your animation and explanation. Very detailed, clear and beautiful. I wonder how many person-hours you spent in designing the animation. Very nice work. I'll definitely show this to my Computer Engineering students.

I've read several books about the enigma machine, watched a documentary, and even looked at schematics of one, and never had everything fall in place like it has after watching this video. Thanks so much for this amazingly detailed breakdown of such an iconic piece of history!

Don't know what I'm more impressed with- the Enigma machine, the people who cracked it, or this guy who made this animation...

Back in college, my best friend asked me to assist her on her final project for her cryptography class. While half her class did papers or presentations on crypto-currency, She, myself and another class mate got together and built an eigma machine from scratch. It didn't look anything like the real thing. We used cardboard rotors with fastener pin contacts and a few scattered lego pieces. You had to manually rotate each rotor for every input, the whole thing was a mess of wires and looked like trash. But it worked. We got the cryptography right. The mess of parts that looked more like a middle school art project than an electro-mechanical computer successfully scrambled messages and decoded them. In the end we got an A- on the project because it was only 90% finished, but we proved to the professor we understood the process and mechanics and this was his favorite project of all of them. In hindsight, I wish we had gotten a group photo with the thing.

That was a really smooth video. Makes it feel possible to build one without having the school work in engineering of any sort.

For the German Army, a current STA student (who was previously handled in manufacturing and distribution of the Enigma, but in 2011, he did something bad. The student announced that his school would do a Katy Perry lip dub involving Haley and half of his school, which was great.) unwrapped the Enigma. The first thing the student did was typed a letter on the keyboard of his Enigma, which was either S-T-A, or P-A-F-I. Then a letter on the lampboard of his Enigma lighted up. The rotors, reflector, and plugboard of his Enigma scrambled his words and decoded them. Then he choosed his rotors, shifted the number wheels, setted the correct rotors, and configured the plugboard.

What an amazingly well-done explanation of something that is rather complex. I now understand why it was such a hard code to crack. Keep up the great work!!

There should be a sequel to this video. During WWII, breaking the Enigma code was important for the Allied victory. Computer scientist Allen Turing built one of the first computers for the sole purpose of breaking the code. It is called the Bombe Machine, and I am curious to know how it worked.

So, we have 3 geniuses here : - The man who built Enigma - The man who cracked Enigma And this man with such an incredible explanation and animation. Bravo !

INCREDIBLE video. I was Very Very Confused before watching this. NOW, my confusion is more organized. The wizards at Bletchely Park, England were only partly successful in cracking this. They needed a captured "Enigma" to fully solve the code. Japan also had a machine of their own called The Purple Machine.

I’m not sure how it’d be explained, but a really cool sequel to this would be a dissection of The Bombe

I showed this to the “cool uncle” (as people call him) of mine who has a degree in electrical engineering and he’s still blown away by this machine. Such a confusing and yet still impressive piece of engineering.

Great 3d modeling, you explained it perfectly. Enigma is a marvel of engineering. Also respect for Alan Turing.

I was a radio operator in the Army for a short spell. We'd use code books with different call signs for message encrypting and the codes changed every day. Never failed though... some private would forget the codes (or lost the book) and screw up all the messages. That's when we busted out the Radio Shack walkie talkies and talk in plain English. Real top-secret stuff there!

This makes what Alan Turing and Co did even more impressive.

Imagine this was the most advanced tech back then mind blowing how they made it to work

I personally knew a lady who in the 1940's used this machine every day at Bletchley Park, apparently the girls that operate these machines were military secretary's and they were seeing the biggest military secrets of the time being deciphered in front of their very own eyes before anyone else, she went from being a secretary to knowing the most highly classified information overnight. She showed me a book that had been written about Bletchley Park and on the back cover was a black & white photo of some of the Bletchley team and she pointed herself out to me in the photo. Apparently she hadn't told anyone about her role during the war at Bletchley until after the book had been released because she knew how to keep a secret. One fatal floor in the way the Enigma machine encrypted individual letters was no matter how many times it jumbled out a replacement alternative letter it would never use the original letter as part of its code, well that's what I herd and seeing this explanation of how it worked I think that looks correct? If your a Bletchley Park historians who might know more about the old lady I knew or what the book was I would love to hear your comments I feel rather honoured to have known the old girl.

Funfact: Operating at 4.5 V, the Enigma could theoretically be powered off a USB power bank, maybe with a little buck converter. Current draw might be an issue though. This thing is incredibly fun and there are people who build modern replicas of them....but they are not exactly cheap. My current profile pic actually shows me pressing a few keys on an original Enigma.