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.

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.

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!

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

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!!

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

This is an amazing visualizing video about encryption and decryption problem, and it also shows it doesn't matter how many steps of encryption you have, it's never gonna be completely undecryptable. The fact that we need at least two participants for communication who has to configure their common encryption method is always gives the chance to third party participants during the configuration to access the key for each code.

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

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.

My friend...your talents have no bounds & as a Mathematician, this is THE best exposition of the Enigma System I've ever seen! This detailed presentation is seriously worthy of an award & as a new Subscriber, I seriously hope it gets recognized as such among the Channel's amazing, animated content! Keep up the great work indeed!! 👏👏

Used a machine similar to this when I was in the military. It takes an exacting acquired knack to operate. Results are quite impressive even today.

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.

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!

In the late 60's early 70's we in the Army were still using basically the same machine to encode messages. Thanks a good presentation.

This makes it look simple. The most interesting part to me is how the key switches are used for sending letters and lighting up the encoded letter just by moving the middle conductor, which acts as its own return spring

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

I can only imagine how long it would have taken to animate this! Let alone all the research. Great work, very well explained

내 10년 동안 온갖 영상 보면서도 이니그마 작동 원리를 제대로 이해 못 했는데, 이 영상 보고 마침내 제대로 이해했습니다. 정말 감사합니다.

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 !