Secret German WW2 code machine found on eBayBy Paddy O'Connell
Presenter, Radio 4's Broadcasting House
29 May 2016
A historic machine used to swap top secret messages between Hitler and his generals has been found languishing in a shed in Essex.
Volunteers from The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park used eBay to track down the keyboard of the Lorenz machine.
It was advertised as a telegram machine and was for sale for £9.50.
The museum, in Buckinghamshire, is now asking people to search for the motor, another key piece of the equipment.
"My colleague was scanning eBay and he saw a photograph of what seemed to be the teleprinter," said John Wetter, a volunteer at the museum.
[Captions and more photos at link below.]
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During the war, the Lorenz teleprinter was used to swap personal messages from Hitler to the generals
The teleprinter, which resembles a typewriter, would have been used to enter plain messages in German. These were then encrypted by a linked cipher machine, using 12 individual wheels with multiple settings on each, to make up the code.
Andy Clark, chairman of the trustees at The National Museum of Computing, said the Lorenz was stationed in secure locations as "it was far bigger than the famous portable Enigma machine".
"Everybody knows about Enigma, but the Lorenz machine was used for strategic communications," said Clark.
"It is so much more complicated than the Enigma machine and, after the war, machines of the same style remained in use."
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Volunteers are hoping to recreate the whole process on Friday 3 June, from typing a message in German to cracking the code using wartime equipment.
"This gives us the chance to show the breaking of the Lorenz cipher code from start to finish," said Andy Clark.
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Volunteers hope the public will look out for it and if all else fails are hoping someone might want to build them a new one until they find it.
For more on this story listen to Broadcasting House at 09:00 BST on Sunday 29 May, or catch up on iPlayer.
Excerpted from
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36401663
