Life Members of the Switzerland LMAG were invited to attend ENIGMA Day at ENTER Technikwelt Solothurn in Derendingen, Switzerland, on 2 February 2025. This is the leading museum of analog and digital technology in Switzerland. ENIGMA Day was an opportunity to learn how encryption technologies have shaped history and how codes are cracked. Attendees heard three interesting talks followed by a look at the museum’s cipher machine collection.
Erich Blösch talked about “Operation ULTRA: A Mastermind Against Hitler’s Weapons,” which described the code-breaking effort in Bletchley Park in the UK. The Enigma operation was covered along with pre-war mathematical analysis performed by Poland and their creation of the Bomba machine. Then the Turing-Welchman Bombe was described along with the contributions of Alan Turing.
Paul Reuvers and Marc Simons talked about “Operation Rubicon: The Intelligence Coup of the Century,” which described how Crypto AG encryption machines came under the control of the German Intelligence Service and the CIA. Boris Hagelin developed cipher machines in the 1950s. His company was secretly sold to the U.S. and German agencies in 1970.
Dominik Landwehr talked about the history of encryption machines and discussed Sigsaly, a secure speech system used in WWII, which pioneered digital communications, including pulse-code modulation.
