How did the Enigma Machine work?

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!!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

I'm amazed by the video. I'm amazed by the creators of the machine. But I'm even more impressed by the people who worked out how to crack the code.

I've NEVER commented on a YouTube video before. But this was absolutely fantastic. I've read many online descriptions of how the Enigma worked, but for visual people, this was perfect. Really amazing. Thank you very much for creating this!

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

I almost didn’t watch this, thinking “I know this.” I understood the electrical part, the dials, and the random plugboard key swapping. But while I thought I understood it, I had NEVER been able to visualize it, to actually understand how the machine worked. Kudos! Excellent visualization and Graphics!

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.

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.

The sheer genius of the minds that came up with this is just incomprehensible to me, as is the utter brilliance of the people that managed to design a machine to crack it.

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.

INCREDIBLE video. I was Very Very Confused before watching this. NOW, my confusion is more organized. The wizards at Bletchely Park, England were only partly successful in cracking this. They needed a captured "Enigma" to fully solve the code. Japan also had a machine of their own called The Purple Machine.

I had an embedded systems course last semester, and we had to program the enigma using assembly language. But the first step was to really understand how the enigma worked. I owe it all to this video.

I create escape rooms for a living and over the last 7 years have immersed myself in all manner of encryption. This is the most clear concise explanation of the Enigma I have seen. Those who can make the complex and convoluted clear for anyone are gifts to us all.

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

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 !