Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
Until 2003, Hebern was generally recognized as the
inventor of the rotor encryption machine. In that year,
scholars published research showing that in 1915, two years
before Hebern's work, a rotor machine had been designed
and built by two Dutch naval officers, Lieutenant R.P.C.
Spengler and Lieutenant Theo van Hengel, a second pro-
totype built by a Dutch mechanical engineer and wireless
operator, Lieutenant W.K. Maurits, and the devices tested
by the Dutch navy in the East Indies under the direction
of Rear Admiral F. Bauduin. The navy declined to proceed
with the project, however, and the participants did not
immediately pursue a patent. At the end of World War I,
Spengler and van Hengel sought to patent their idea, but
the navy resisted declassifying their work. Meanwhile,
Hebern had filed a patent claim in 1917, which held up
through the years, and gradually the Dutch inventors were
forgotten.
Starting in 1921 and continuing through the next
decade, Hebern constructed a series of steadily improv-
ing rotor machines that were evaluated by the U.S. Navy
and undoubtedly led to the United States' superior posi-
tion in cryptology as compared to that of the Axis powers
during World War II. The 1920s were marked by a series
of challenges by inventors of cipher machines to national
cryptologic services and by one service to another, result-
ing in a steady improvement of both cryptomachines
and techniques for the analysis of machine ciphers. At
almost the same time that Hebern was developing the
rotor cipher machine in the United States, European
engineers, notably Hugo A. Koch of the Netherlands and
Arthur Scherbius of Germany, independently discovered
the rotor concept and designed machines that became the
precursors of the best-known cipher machine in history,
the German Enigma used in World War II.
