![]() ![]() Mayer, a German speaker, translated inscriptions found inside the case. They elicited cheers from the small assembled crowd, which included Mary Kay Johnsen, special collections librarian and Scott Weingart, program director, Digital Humanities, as the rotors were removed. Wearing white cotton gloves, Mayer and Ahuja carefully dismantled the 3-rotor machine first, pausing occasionally to consult with Harrison or refer to online resources. “Part of our investigation today is to check out the condition of the machines to see what quality they’ve survived in, and to recover the serial numbers on the rotors in particular, which are a major clue to identifying when it was made, where it was made and the configuration it was in,” Harrison said. When the university received the Enigma machines, their model type, the year they were created, and the unit to which they may have been assigned during WWII were unknown. “This is a really exciting opportunity to have a piece of computing history, to be a part of its history and to find out more about its history,” Harrison said. With only 318 Enigma machines known to exist today, the experience offered a once in a lifetime opportunity for Sven Mayer, postdoctoral researcher Yang Zhang, doctoral student, and Karan Ahuja, doctoral student, all of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. ![]() Under the direction of Chris Harrison, Haberman Chair, assistant professor of human-computer interaction, and director of the Future Interfaces Group, three researchers partially disassembled the intricate machines. “Today, historians and engineers with screwdrivers are attempting to recapture the inner workings of a past technology and trace the intellectual connections between this electromechanical piece of the past and today’s information technology ecosystem,” McGee said. With this gift, CMU became one of a handful of American institutions to own an Enigma machine.Įnigma machines, electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used to encrypt communication, were most notably used by Nazi Germany to protect military communication during World War II.ĭuring a four-hour period on October 7, campus historians and researchers associated with History of Science and Technology at CMU (HOST CMU) - a cross-campus, interdisciplinary initiative to collect and preserve CMU’s historical contributions to scientific and technical development - assembled in the Hunt Library Fine and Rare Book Room to open up the machines.Īndrew Meade McGee, visiting assistant professor of history and the University Libraries’ CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Science and Computing, described the procedure as a hands-on history exercise. The University Libraries acquired the two encryption devices - one 4-rotor machine and one 3-rotor machine - in February 2018 as part of a collection of more than 50 calculating machines, letters and books gifted to the university by author Pamela McCorduck, wife of the late Computer Science Department Head Joseph Traub. Researchers had a rare opportunity to peek “under the hood” of the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries’ two Enigma machines, opening the World War II-era machines to photograph their carefully-crafted interiors and to locate and record the serial numbers printed on their rotors.
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