Secret codes and the machines that broke them — the crucible of modern computing
From the clicking rotors of the Enigma to the glowing vacuum tubes of Colossus, these machines represent a hidden chapter of World War II that gave birth to the computer age. Explore the ingenious mechanisms that encrypted Hitler’s most secret orders, and the equally ingenious machines built at Bletchley Park and in Konrad Zuse’s Berlin apartment to break them—or simply to compute.
The encryption devices that guarded the Third Reich’s most secret communications. Rotor mechanics and teleprinter ciphers that defied the world’s best codebreakers.
Type letters on the keyboard and watch the electrical signal trace through plugboard, three rotors, and reflector. Set rotor order, ring settings, and plugboard wiring.
Hitler’s high-command teleprinter cipher. Explore the 12-wheel mechanism with chi, psi, and motor wheels performing XOR operations on the Vernam cipher principle.
The secret weapons of Bletchley Park. Electromechanical and electronic machines that cracked “unbreakable” ciphers and shortened the war by years.
Set a crib (known plaintext) and watch 36 Enigma-equivalent units rapidly test rotor positions until a consistent configuration is found. See the menu logic diagram.
The world’s first programmable electronic computer. Feed cipher tape through the optical reader, program the plug panel, and watch vacuum tubes count statistical matches.
Built in wartime Berlin by Konrad Zuse, these pioneering machines introduced binary computation, floating-point arithmetic, and programmability to the world.
The first freely programmable binary computer, built from thin metal sheets in a Berlin living room. Watch mechanical sliding plates implement AND, OR, and addition gates.
The world’s first working programmable automatic digital computer. Write simple programs, watch 2,600 telephone relays click, and see binary floating-point arithmetic in action.