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Enigma on auction


val

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Hello Val,

Thanks for the  link...WOW!....would I love to have one of these, but at that price (which are so, so very rare....I can't manage it at all)

Best to you....Desert Rat/ Ian

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Hello due to very high price start i guess none of those machines were sold

 

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A lot not right about this machine, to start with the case looks fake to me. Other late war "bac" machines seem to have been issued in the Luftwaffe style boxes. They also do not feature the rotor cover. Even the serial number plate is not typical of other "bac" machines and probably a fake. The description at least states that the cabling on the interconnection cables are non original, but they stay silent about the more serious inconsistencies. To me it is a very poor restoration. The T1 key must make it worth it though 😉

A lot of surviving enigma's were collected by MI6 and the CIA immediately after the war, refurbished, renumbered and sold to "friendly" governments as state of the art cypher equipment (obviously without telling them that the US and GB could break the cypher routinely; this is one of the reasons why the Bletchley secret remained a secret for so long, the enigma codes were being cracked long after the war). Some of these ex CIA/MI6 machines came on the market 15-20 years ago and have now been re-fitted with faked "original" German tag plates, and I suspect the machine on offer in the auction is one of these.

Add to that that due to high prices the faking of complete enigma machines and parts is increasing by the day. Most of these fakes can easily be spotted if you know what to look for, but for the uninitiated it is becoming a bit of a minefield. Completely original enigma will be difficult to find; with original I mean originally numbered, with all five matching numbered wheels etc.

Mind you, Enigmas are actually not as rare as you think, there must still be many hundreds out there, they are just overpriced because they have become a millionaire's plaything.

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  • 4 weeks later...

To All you radio experts out there....Val, Funks, Whsammler, Alperator, Fritze, Tornfute, etc

I send my Best Wishes for a Safe & Peaceful 2019, and thank you all for your great knowledge you have shared with us on MCN over the last few months!

Many Thanks to You All.

Desert Rat / Ian

Edited by Desert Rat
correction to text
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  • 5 months later...
5 minutes ago, val said:

This one was on Ebay.com for 250.000.... I have seen quite a lot of "myth building" around Enigma prices recently. Untouched machines are indeed rare, most survivors are post war re-issue machines sold by the CIA to "friendly nations" (conveniently forgetting to tell that they were breaking enigma traffic routinely, why do you think Bletchley's story remained classified for so long...) I might be wrong, but I have my suspicions that the machine offered is one of these re-issued machines, re-worked again to look more original. The tag plate does not look like an original Ertel Werke plate. I am also not so sure about the hybrid bakelite/metal rotors. In any case the price is pure fantasy, deliberate hiked to try create a new "normal"....

regards,

Funksammler

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@Funksammler - do you have any close up image of standard 3 wheel Enigma battery

box internals that shows battery contacts?

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19 minutes ago, val said:

@Funksammler - do you have any close up image of standard 3 wheel Enigma battery

box internals that shows battery contacts?

 

enigma.jpg

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1 hour ago, val said:

Thanks @Funksammler, that "660" Enigma seems to have this battery inside:

battery_1.jpg

battery_3.jpg

Indeed, it was a standard "long life" battery size of the age, used in lamps and equipment like the Enigma and the Sutel40. So it is not a special "enigma" battery....

 

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17 hours ago, Funksammler said:

Indeed, it was a standard "long life" battery size of the age, used in lamps and equipment like the Enigma and the Sutel40. So it is not a special "enigma" battery....

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/daimon_kasten_batterie_no_263.html

Those measures and cell count suggest that there were 6 ordinary

"D cells" inside, three in series and then those two sets in parallel.

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Dont think I could ever afford one of those....:) 

As a wee aside, I did a small display for our local nursing homes open day on Friday.......and one of the residents, is a lovely lady of 100 years old, and is very alert, and chatty... she was very interested in all the helmets and items on show...then proceeds to tell me, she worked at Bletchley Park during WW2, she met Churchill ,Eisenhower AND Monty on a few occasions...THEN goes on to tell me she was "sent" to Russia and Belgium before D Day!!!! I asked if she was a spy, she laughed and said..."I cant tell you"...LOL...what a lady...bet she used one of those machines at her work...:)

Edited by Norrie
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@Norrie - you should go back there, visit her more, get her some chocolate and i'm sure

she has lot of interesting stories to tell you.

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  • 2 months later...

Hi gentlemen.

Some info about enigma machines employed in Spain that could be of interest for us. This study was elaborated by  three authors: José Ramón Soler Fuensanta, Francisco Javier López-Brea Espiau and Frode Weierud.

K 208 machine is now displayed in my unit historical hall. I would like to test it. 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220615600_Spanish_Enigma_A_History_of_the_Enigma_in_Spain.

Enjoy it.

Ezesar

 

Edited by ezesar
wrong serial number machine. Correct one is K208
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi.

Found today this video made by University of Burgos with Burgos Military Museum.

A very interesting animation showing how the A and K series Enigma (commercial) ciphering machine works.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnsTHAH5yAE

Sadly only in Spanish, subtitles included.

Regards.

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