From Sixteenth-Century Cryptography to the New Millennium — The Last 500 Years - Codes: The Guide to Secrecy from Ancient to Modern Times - page 90

the war. Later a Joint Congressional Committee met for an investigation of the
Pearl Harbour attack and concluded that the war efforts of America's cryptan-
alysts had shortened the war, and saved thousands of lives. We will now have
a look at how some of that was accomplished.
American cryptanalysts were able to decipher a highly secret cryptogram
detailing the itinerary of the Japanese Navy Admiral Isoruko Yamamoto's plane
tour of the Solomon Islands. Thus, the Americans were able to pinpoint his
whereabouts and shoot down his plane. American cryptanalysts also helped
to ensure that Japan's lifeline was rapidly cut, and the German U-boats were
defeated. Perhaps the best-known and most vital success was the Battle of
Midway. The cryptanalysts were able to give complete information on the size
and location of the Japanese forces advancing on Midway. This enabled the
Navy to concentrate a numerically inferior force in precisely the right place at
the right time that turned the tide of the Pacific War. This was a stunning
victory for American cryptanalysts.
Another outcome of World War II was an outstanding advance in cryptanal-
ysis by the Americans. To discuss it, we must go back to the invention of the
electric typewriter, which opened the way for electromechanical enciphering.
The first electric contact rotor machine was invented by Edward Hugh Hebern
in 1915. He used two electric typewriters randomly connected by twenty-six
wires. Hence a plaintext letter key hit on one typewriter would yield a cipher-
text letter to be printed on the other machine. These wire connections were
the seminal idea for the idea of a rotor, namely, a way of varying the monoal-
phabetic enciphering. By 1918, Hebern had a device that embodied the rotor
principle. He filed a patent in 1921, but did not receive it until 1924. In 1919,
patents were also filed for rotor enciphering machines by Alexander Koch and
Avrid Gerhard Damn, the latter for half rotors. Damn owned a company called
Aktiebolaget Cryptograph or Cryptograph Incorporated. In 1922, Emanuel No-
bel, nephew of the famed Alfred Nobel, put Boris Caesar Wilhelm Hagelin to
work in Damn's company. Hagelin simplified and improved one of Damn's ma-
chines. This was such a success that the Swedish army placed a large order
with Damn's firm. When Damn died in 1927, Hagelin took over the operation
of the firm. Later, he developed the rotor-based cipher machine, called the Con-
verter M-209 by the American military; this was so successful that in the early
1940s more than 140 , 000 were manufactured. Hagelin's M-209 used a version
of the self-decrypting Beaufort cipher . (The Beaufort cipher was a variant of
the Vienere cipher, and was published by Admiral Beaufort's brother after his
death in 1857, in the form of a four by five inch card. Admiral Sir Francis Beau-
fort (Royal Navy), was also the creator of the Beaufort scale , an instrument
used by meteorologists to indicate wind velocities on a scale from 0 to 12, where
0 is calm and 12 is a hurricane.) Royalties from the sales of Hagelin's cipher
machine made him the first millionaire of cryptography. Perhaps, Hagelin had
Thomas Jefferson to thank since his wheel cypher inspired the development of
rotor machines (see page 66).
In 1918, the German Arthur Scherbius applied for a patent on a rotor en-
ciphering machine using multiple rotors. In 1923, a corporation was formed