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As you can see in the simulaton, the decoding will not work if even one rotor is not set to the correct setting. This made it especially hard to decipher.
The machine was originally invented in 1918 by Albert Scherbius. He tried to sell it to the German armed forces, but they didn't realize its potential at first. It was bought and modified by the German Navy in 1925.
The machine worked with a plug board, a light board, a keyboard, several sets of rotors, and a reflector. To operate the machine, the operator would select one rotor from each set, and simply type the message to be encoded. This would send an electrical signal through the machine. The rotor would spin a determined amount, and allow the typed key to make an electrical connection with the letter to be printed. This way, the machine came up with a different coded letter each time the letter was typed, making millions of combinations possible for one word.
The coded messages could be easily decoded -- if the decoder had an enigma machine and knew the right settings to put it on. He or she would simply type the encoded message, and it would come out to be decoded (as you saw in the simulation). This would only work if the person who was trying to decode had the exact settings as the one who encoded it. To make sure this dd jnot happen, the German army changed the settings slightly every day, and kept a book to tell operators which settings to put the machine at.
The only problem with the encoding of the Enigma machine was that there was a design flaw with the machine -- no letter could be printed as itself. this gave decoders a 'toehold' as to figuring out how the machine worked.
During the invasion of Poland, some of the Poles were able to capture a machine and bring it back to England. In England, codebreakers were able to use the knowledge they already had, and their newly obtained machine, to decode some of the German messages. They mostly relied on captured documents to decipher the code.
In England, a new verion of the Enigma was created, called the Bomba. The Bomba was named for the ticking sound it made while typing, reminding them of a bomb. It preformed the same operation as the enigma, decoding the messages that were sent back and fourth.The projec was run by a man named Joe Desch (for more information on Desch, click HERE) The Germans eventually found out about this scheme, and added a fourth rotor to their machine in Feb. 1, 1942. This made decoding the new Enigma nearly impossible.
While it lasted, the information obtained from the Enigma was very useful in the War. "Some ask why, if we were reading the Enigma, did we not win the war earlier. One might ask instead, when, if ever, we would have won the war if we hadn't read it.". For example, the deciphering of the enigma told American forces exactly where the German army planned to send U-Boats, so american wardships could either evade or prepare to attack them before they actually struck. This, along with other instances gave us the upper hand in many situations, and saved thousands of american lives.
