Enigma Machine for Sale on eBay

RagingMaxx writes "An Italian antiques dealer has recently put to auction a mint condition, fully operational Enigma machine on eBay. The machine, dated circa 1938, will be sold to the highest bidder in just over a week, but after 30 hours of bidding the price has already surpassed $12,000 US. For those of you who can't afford the real thing, why not make your own?"

Potential buyer

[EveryNickIsTaken]

I hear that the MPAA is interested in purchasing the machine - as they've heard that it has unbreakable encryption.

Re:

[Gregb05]

Tagged Godwin.
MPAA doesn't want unbreakable encryption; who would they sue?


England and America for violation of DMCA?

Darn

[CastrTroy]

Looks like it's only the 3 gear model. If it was the four gear model, I surely would have purchased it :P.

Re:Darn

[Detritus]

How many four gear models survived the war? They were installed in u-boats, which weren't noted for a long life expectancy.

Re:Darn

[MichaelSmith]

How many four gear models survived the war? They were installed in u-boats, which weren't noted for a long life expectancy.

When thinking of answers to questions like that I find it impossible to separate cryptomonicon from reality.

As usual, wikipedia has some answers [wikipedia.org]

Re:Darn

[CastrTroy]

You mean Cryptonomicon wasn't real?

Re:

[simong]

Of course it is, I'm posting from the machine hall on Kinakuta. Oh, wait a minute, no I'm not.

Re:

[gijoel]

A rare Abwehr Enigma machine, designated G312, was stolen from the Bletchley Park museum on 1 April 2000. In September, a man identifying himself as "The Master" sent a note demanding £25,000 and threatened to destroy the machine if the ransom was not paid.

The Master, eh? What's Mr. Saxon going to do about this, I'd like to know.

U-505 and Enigma in Chicago

[hguorbray]

The U-505 -now at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry was captured in '43 near Africa and hauled to the Bahamas:

http://www.msichicago.org/exhibit/U505/index.html [msichicago.org]

I was there last week and it is a pretty cool exhibit -although the rest of the museum is pretty kids oriented. That enigma machine looks a little smaller and lighter than the one on eBay. The whole story of saving the sub from scrap and moving it from the Bahamas to Chicago is an interesting one too.

the sailors captured were held incommunica

Re:

[turing_m]

"Probably justifiable at the time, but one of those slippery slope-type situations like Lincoln jailing journalists under the sedition act....like Gitmo..."

Anything and everything is justifiable... on the side that wins the war. Classify the truth, indoctrinate those who don't know, and kill or imprison those who know enough to throw doubt on your justification.

Re:Darn

[Iphtashu Fitz]

True, but at least a half dozen of them were successfully recovered by the Allies during the war. The movie U-571 is a dramatization of one of these successes, and the credits at the end of the movie list a number of other incidents where Enigmas were captured. No idea what happened to all of these though. My bet would be that either they ended up in museums or were destroyed after the war.

The Enigmas were not the only things destroyed

[Bearhouse]

In the interests of 'National Security', the British Govt. broke up the team that broke the Enigma codes, and 'classified' or destroyed the equipment that they had imagined, designed AND built to help. Thereby setting back the UK IT industry by - oh, let's say 10 years, IMHO.

Not gonna Karma-whore by posting a zillion Wikiped links, but it's all there if you're interested and don't know the story. Worth a read, newbies, since a lot of what you now take for granted was developed by these folks.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an unfortunately common procedure. When the production of SR-71s was halted all the designs and equipment was destroyed so new ones couldn't be built. This probably set aerospace, metallurgy and who knows what else back for at least as much.

Re:

[GreggBz]

To site a few other examples, the Avro Arrow, and that huge elephant in the middle of the room, Apollo. Most of that equipment was forgotten, left to rust, or lost. This makes me angry.

Re:

[jollyreaper]

In the interests of 'National Security', the British Govt. broke up the team that broke the Enigma codes, and 'classified' or destroyed the equipment that they had imagined, designed AND built to help. Thereby setting back the UK IT industry by - oh, let's say 10 years, IMHO.

Oh, it's completely understandable. Wouldn't want the defeated Germans to figure out we were reading their mail. And by destroying the evidence they can't prove it. Makes perfect sense, pip pip.

Re:

[jeremyp]

I don't think that's true. The core of activity was merely transferred to where it is now - GCHQ in Cheltenham. Had the government kept the team together they wouldn't have been able to go out and make progress in the civilian world. For instance, had Alan Turing remained at GCHQ, none of his post war work in the field of computing would have happened.

Many of the pioneers of British computing had previously worked at Bletchley.

It's also wrong IMO to suggest that, in the early days of computing the Briti

Re:

[clickclickdrone]

>>Thereby setting back the UK IT industry by - oh, let's say 10 years, IMHO.
>It still is.
Look, I'm doing my best here guys...

Re:

[jd]

What, you're really trying to set it back further?

Re:

[Bearhouse]

Indeed - they started the whole thing off. Before the shared their insights & techniques with the British, French & Americans, the latter were nowhere in solving Enigma. It's a scandal that afterwards they were neither recognised for their efforts, nor integrated with the British team.

Re:Darn

[hoofie]

While your post is correct about the film being a 'dramatisation', that film was some serious fiction. The Americans weren't even in the war when the first Enigmas were captured. The first capture of note [not an Enigma machine itself but something more vital] was grabbed from U110 by Sub-Lieutenant David Balme, aboard HMS Bulldog on the 9th May 1941 who was subsequently awarded a DSC for his actions. Before leaving the submarine, he grabbed a sealed envelope that contained the hyper-secret starting positions used by the Kriegsmarine.

This one looks like an Enigma 1 [Wermacht or Services Enigma]. They were also used by government and banks so this one could have been ex-government etc.

The important of cracking Enigma cannot ever be overstated. There is a general agreement amongst historians that the Allies ability to read the German's encrypted traffic shaved a couple of years off the war. I would encourage our American brethren to read the book 'Enigma:The Battle for the Code' by Simon Sebag-Montefiore. Its an exceptionally good and instructive read about the whole Enigma issue.

See also (in German):

[OmniGeek]

A *very* interesting account of the Enigma's history from a postwar Polish perspective, translated in East Germany (I got my copy from the gift shop at the Rundfunkmuseum in Nuremberg). This is a translation from the Polish original.

German Translation: "Im Banne Der Enigma" (Under The Spell Of The Enigma)
Original title: "W krgu Enigmy", published in Warsaw in 1979
Author: Wladyslaw Kozaczuk

Translation published by: Militärverlag der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik
(translator's name not listed)
ISBN 3-327-00423-4

In addition to its rather interesting political perspective, the book has an extremely detailed account of the Polish Intelligence Service's work on Enigma, including material I'd not seen in most of the more accessible Western literature on Enigma. In essence, the Polish crypto boffins had Enigma cracked (including automated cracking machines) before the war even started, but lacked the resources to scale up their efforts as the machines were upgraded (addition of the plugboard and new rotors); that, and the German occupation of Poland and later France, led them to share their findings with Britain, and the history most folks hear about.

BTW, WRT the "Enigma-E" electronic Enigma machine, I highly recommend it. I still get a kick out of decrypting messages with the one I built (in its nifty wooden case). Well worth the cost for those who've gotten the "Enigma virus".

Erratum:"krgu" should be "kregu" (sort of)

[OmniGeek]

"krgu" in the above post should have rendered as "kregu", where the "e" is actually a non-latin character -- an "e" with a tail below it. Not that anyone will actually search for that title, but it's best to provide accurate info where possible...

Re:Darn

[piquadratCH]

The important of cracking Enigma cannot ever be overstated. There is a general agreement amongst historians that the Allies ability to read the German's encrypted traffic shaved a couple of years off the war.

I would go as far and say that cracking Enigma prevented nuclear bombs over Europe. Nevertheless, the names of Rejewski, Turing and others have been forgotten or never known by the public. It's a shame.

Re:Darn

[DerekLyons]

The important of cracking Enigma cannot ever be overstated.

Actually, it can be (and often is) overstated. The fascination with Enigma, among both the general public and the historians, often obscures (or fails to mention at all) the fact that the codebreaking effort was but one portion of the overall electronic intelligence effort. Especially in the Battle of the Atlantic where Huff-Duff and more conventional technques (like traffic analysis) yielded vast amounts of vital intelligence data.
 
Even with decrypted ciphertext, it always took considerable analysis to break the code(s) the messages used in the text for further security. (In the Atlantic the Allies, for example, never got a break like 'AF is short of fresh water'.)

Re:

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

I would encourage our American brethren to read the book 'Enigma:The Battle for the Code' by Simon Sebag-Montefiore

...and what should Britons read for further information? How about Canadians? Or is it only Americans who need a book list patronizingly offered up?

Re:

[jollyreaper]

...and what should Britons read for further information? How about Canadians? Or is it only Americans who need a book list patronizingly offered up?

Might I suggest for them both "Everybody Poops?" [amazon.com] This will greatly aid you in understanding your American cousins. For advanced reading, see "The Gas We Pass, the Story of Farts." [amazon.com]

Re:

[Deadstick]

The Americans weren't even in the war when the first Enigmas were captured.

Matter of fact, when US forces did capture a U-boat with its Enigma machine, they came close to blowing the whole operation. A rather flamboyant Naval officer named Gallery planned and carried out the operation on his own initiative, unaware that the Allies already had the machine, and the Chief of Naval Operations went ballistic when he heard of it. There was quite a scramble to keep the capture secret.

rj

Re:

[clickclickdrone]

>The movie U-571 is a dramatization of one of these successes
And wildly inaccurate too.

Re:

[Joe The Dragon]

there is one at the Museum of Science and Industry along with the U-505 and that boat was used in the movie U-571

Re:Darn

[pegr]

How many four gear models survived the war? They were installed in u-boats, which weren't noted for a long life expectancy.
 
QKGYE SYEBD ARELM YEKHD? QTDPO STWEK YEGDT MWKOI FDYUW ARRTK HQPTY NVDQK!

Re:

[TommydCat]

Thanks that worked!! My idea to put an enigma gear into my wobbly hard drive to create an encrypted file system didn't pan out so well and I could no longer read the text file I keep all my XP activation keys...

But it has the plug board

[mbone]

It has the plug board, which means it was the military, not the weaker commercial, Enigma. And, there were no 4 gear models until the 40's.

It also has the military symbol...

[Joce640k]

It also has a great big military symbol on it ... bit of a giveaway, really.

I know this is slashdot...but does nobody look at the pictures before posting?

Re:

[mbone]

I certainly did - the plug board is harder to forge. (And, the sellers don't seem to realize its significance, as they don't clearly show it.)

Re:

[Joce640k]

Sorry...I didn't mean to imply it was you who hadn't looked at the pictures - if you know about the plugboard you obviously know what an Enigma machine is.

I meant all the other posters...

Re:

[Garabito]

Looks like it's only the 3 gear model. If it was the four gear model, I surely would have purchased it :P.

I'll wait for the automatic transmission model.

Instructions?

[JonathanR]

It comes complete with instructions (cypher-text of course) on how to win the War on Terror. Ask DVD Jon for the key.

Re:

[morgan_greywolf]

I did. He told me it was 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.

Re:

[mbone]

You are aware that the Germans referred to the resistance movements in Europe as terrorists ?

Re:

[Analogy Man]

And then there were the anarchists dressed as indigenous people (i.e. not in uniform) undermining an established democratic government by dumping that tea into Boston harbor.

Re:

[morcego]

You are aware that the Germans referred to the resistance movements in Europe as terrorists ?

Yes, I am. In fact, many of those groups actually WERE terrorists. Not all, thou.
I really can't say if most were terrorists or not, since I have no clue. I have an auntie who lived in Paris at the time, and whose father was part of the resistance. He was not exactly a terrorist, but neither from one of the more moderate groups. The point I want to make is that he told her (never met him myself) there were groups tha

Re:

[Knuckles]

In fact, many of those groups actually WERE terrorists

Are you insane? So it is "terrorism" now to fight with violence a regime that is bringing blood and suffering over the world and commits a horrific genocide? A resistance fighter and a hero is each and every one of them, nearly regardless of their specific actions.

Re:

[morcego]

How is that difference from what, last say, Al Queada does ?
As far as THEY are concerned, they are "fighting with violence a regime that is blinding blood and suffering over the world and commits a horrific genocide".

Either we have clear parameter to define something, or we don't define it. What you are saying is, basically, if you side is doing it, it is heroism. If the other side is doing it, it is terrorism.

For your information, there were some resistance groups that even attacked German civilians. All p

Re:

[Knuckles]

I agree, it's a matter of definition. I define these actions as morally right, in my frame of reference, and I consider anyone doing anything else a potential threat to my liberty. On a grander level it is indeed a question of who has won -- did you ever think otherwise, and believe that had the Nazis won, they'd remember the same people as we do today?
As for those resistance fighters who attacked German and Austrian civilians, I applaud and thank them for providing my countrymen with the just consequences

Fantastic

[hcdejong]

Now nobody will be able to understand what I'm saying.

Re:Fantastic

[gkhan1]

So, nothing new?

That explains it

[Hair-Dog13]

Well, the low price must be due to the fact that you really have to have a set of two to use them......

Re:

[mrjb]

Okay, here's the second one. [tesco.net]

Re:

[MichaelSmith]

Well, the low price must be due to the fact that you really have to have a set of two to use them......

Or a bombe

Re:That explains it

[CastrTroy]

Someone set us up the bombe.

Re:

[hcdejong]

Or a bombe

AIU, that would be "Or a bombe, and a team of cryptographers". Cracking an Enigma message was a two-step process.
1. create a 'menu', a set of clues to be fed into the bombe, basically bringing down the number of possible combinations to a manageable level. The menu was created manually.
2. let the bombe do its run.

Re:

[g0dsp33d]

Like the Vista install that came with my laptop?

Re:That explains it

[Garabito]

    *   -----> The joke

   o
  -|-   -----> You
  / \

The future

[mickq]

I can see these being attached to every Blu-ray2 and HD-DVD2 player.....

Re:

[MichaelSmith]

I can see these being attached to every Blu-ray2 and HD-DVD2 player.....

Then we really shouldn't have driven Alan Turing into suicide.

Re:The future

[gkhan1]

Yeah, that's the reason we shouldn't have driven Alan Turing to suicide.

Re:

[gkhan1]

(i don't want to rag on the modding of my own post (please don't mod me down!), but it is slightly disturbing that my comment got a +5 Funny)

Re:

[Prien715]

Then we really shouldn't have driven Alan Turing into suicide.

I really regret all those homophobic actions I took over 20 years before I was born. In a related story, under 60 "news" personalities are still proud of fighting in World War II (see statements like "when we saved you in WWII...")

Military or commercial?

[sphealey]

That looks more like a commercial machine to me. Does anyone see anything that marks it as a military version? Military equipment usually comes with manuals labeled "Machine, Cypher, Field, Mark 5.4.3.12.a" not "Enigma".

sPh

Re:

[simong]

The picture on boingboing looks like a commercial machine. It would be interesting to find out if there was any feedback from the military machine to the commercial machine though as it was the donation of a Polish commercial machine to the British Army that set British Intelligence on the track of decoding the messages.

Re:

[suv4x4]

That looks more like a commercial machine to me. Does anyone see anything that marks it as a military version? Military equipment usually comes with manuals labeled "Machine, Cypher, Field, Mark 5.4.3.12.a" not "Enigma".

Well, and "Shock and Awe" is probably the commercial version of "Military Op. Foxtrot Bravo 5.2.5.3.5.25.a [classified]".

The military are artistic guys in nature.

Re:

[Diamon]

There's no mention of any manual at all in the auction, and the only thing labeled Enigma in the pictures appear to simply be a piece of paper possibly used in a display to let people know what they are looking at. Considering it's a German machine a manual labeled anything in English would be a pretty good indicator that it's not original.

Re:

[mzs]

There is a Wehrmacht symbol stamped into the metal and there is a plugboard below the keyboard so yes this is most likely a military version.

Re:Military or commercial?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not a Wehrmacht "symbol", but the coat of arms of the Third Reich, which in turn is a perverted version of its "predecessor" from the German Empire.

The Wehrmacht symbol, by the way, is a stylized Iron Cross, which is also the current emblem of German armed forces (and has been since the German Empire).

Re:

[Dr_Barnowl]

This has five rotors, two kept in a separate box when not in use, which for a 1938 machine as claimed could make it either a Navy or Army machine. The serial number would indicate an army machine, but since the eBay pictures don't show a metal plate with the full serial number on, it's difficult to verify the manufacturer of the machine.

On looking at the rotors more closely, they are numbered, not lettered. All the discussions of Enigma machines I've ever seen indicate that the rotors should be lettered - a

The secret message is:

[Alien Being]

d-r-i-n-k y-o-u-r o-v-a-l-t-i-n-e

Re:

[jollyreaper]

d-r-i-n-k y-o-u-r o-v-a-l-t-i-n-e

Come on, this was the Third Reich. The message was obviously d-r-i-n-k y-o-u-r o-v-a-l-t-i-n-e a-n-d r-e-g-i-s-t-e-r y-o-u-r s-o-f-t-w-a-r-e

Re:

[Drachemorder]

... or for those of you who have not seen "A Christmas Story", which is where most people have encountered that reference.

Concern about the price.

[DoofusOfDeath]

Gaahhh! How do I outbid the current price of $XCCCX921 ???

unimpressed

[CubicleView]

TFA is nothing more than an enigma wrapped in an ebay auction wrapped in a Slashdot article.

Re:

[jollyreaper]

TFA is nothing more than an enigma wrapped in an ebay auction wrapped in a Slashdot article.

That joke is best protected by a bodyguard of sighs.

How secure is Enigma these days?

[hcdejong]

this page [thinkquest.org] claims modern computers can crack an Enigma message in "a few minutes".
But a recent effort to crack some M4 messages using distributed computing [bytereef.org] estimated some 10,000 PC-hours to break a message.

Re:

[Ecuador]

The Enigma comes in different designs. The easily crackable "in a few minutes" has three rotors. The messages the project M4 uses were encrypted with the much tougher to break 4 rotor design (hence the M4 name of the project).

Re:

[UnknowingFool]

I think the issue is more complex than that.

The thinkquest page is discussing the Bombe machine that Turing developed. It would take about 15 hours for it do one run. A modern computer can perform the same tasks in seconds. The Bombe machine had a very specific task. Its job was not to decipher the messages. Its job was to figure a few probable rotor combinations and settings from thousands of possibilities. The analyst would then test the resulting combinations manually on a block of text.

Also the

Re:

[tokul]

Original Bombe was used to break three rotor commercial enigma. M4 Project is trying to break four rotor Kriegsmarine Enigma messages. Read the ones that are broken. Short messages, non-english language, lots of short cuts, only some words are from dictionary. Even if you broke one, you still have to decypher what von Looks wants to say in his message.

Kriegsmarine has some security rules for Enigma transmissions. U-boat commanders usually followed them.

Re:How secure is Enigma these days?

[cryptoguy]

In theory there were a astronomically large number of possible combinations (3 x 10^114) of rotor wirings, pluggable wirings, and rotor positions in a three-rotor Enigma machine. That key space is incredibly far beyond the capabilities of modern computers to search. However, in reality there were only three rotors implemented at first (later there were five, from which three were chosen for each day). The allies knew the wiring of the three rotors before the war began, and deduced the other two. So instead of having to try all the theoretical combinations of rotors, they only had to try the combinations of the ones that actually were implemented.

The subs had a four-rotor machine, but the operators made a fatal mistake. In order for messages to be read on three-rotor machines, an operator encrypted the same message twice--once with three rotors and once with four. That gave the codebreakers the information they needed to deduce the fourth rotor. They built a machine for breaking the Enigma codes which, given what they knew about the rotors, they could break them quickly enough to be extremely useful in the war.

Also a German U-boat was captured, along with a code book showing the rotor positions for the next few months. With that information they learned enough about the four rotor system to be able to break those messages also.

Re:

[guruevi]

You're forgetting that an Enigma machine couldn't encrypt a letter to itself, so basically not all combinations of possible keys and wirings were possible. This made it easier for them to feed the bombe since they could reduce (manually) the number of possible combinations.

Re:

[Reziac]

In the context of modern computers... has anyone written a program to exactly emulate the Enigma machine? I mean with as near to the same interface, logic, and everything else as can be managed between keyboard and screen.

Why build one when you can play with an emulation?

[syousef]

There are plenty if you Google "Enigma Emulator" or "Enigma Simulator"/"Enigma simulation"

http://homepages.tesco.net/~andycarlson/enigma/eni gma_j.html [tesco.net]

If you want to build something mechanical try a remote control aircraft. Much more fun.

A dupe? Or is there a regular market in these?

[dpbsmith]

...Enigma machines were offered in 2003? [boingboing.net], and offered on eBay in 2006." [theregister.co.uk]

Is there a regular market in these things? Or is this the same machine going through cycles of spiffing up and reselling? Either way, I'm not sure every Enigma that goes on sale is "stuff that matters."

What's remarkable

[fishthegeek]

to me is not the Enigma machine itself, but the Allied response to it and other Axis crypto systems. If you haven't had the chance yet you should read up on the folks at Bletchley Park, it's one of the most fascinating programs of WW2. Without a doubt the people that worked there contributed as much to the effort as any other single organization and probably shortened the war considerably.

There is a pretty good artile on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

why not make your own?

[elgatozorbas]

If I would make one, it would be all electromechanical instead of electronic. The breaking of the enigma code (as excellently described in e.g. Simon Singh's The code book) was only possible by exploiting implementation details. Kodus to the makers of the electronics kit, but a machine with an implementation different to the original one, loses most of its appeal to me.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Rob the Bold]

They listed the same Enigma on eBay last week at $100 000 "Buy It Now", and nobody bit. Perhaps the auction format will be more enticing.

Allied Tactic Against Enigma Wouldn't Work Today

[N8F8]

The only reason the Enigma cracking program was successful is that they knew how to keep is secret. Today there are too many factions in the Congress, FBI and CIA who get a kick out of destroying intelligence programs by leaking them too the press.

Godwin and eBay

[Speare]

Not to invoke Godwin's Law here, but I thought that eBay refused auctions of WWII Nazi German wartime memorabilia? Is it just those items that bear the symbol of the Third Reich? It's a cool object to geek sensibilities. I would say that today, it symbolizes a particularly crafty bit of code-busting on the part of the Allies against Nazi Germany, even moreso than the crafty bit of code-creating clock-engineering work on the part of the Germans. But it's still Nazi memorabilia on some level, which I thought was against eBay rules.

Re:

[srmalloy]

While the pictures on the auction page include one that shows the frame of the machine with the eagle-and-swastika stamp mark impressed into it, I think that because of the small size of the stamp and the perception of the Enigma machine as being a significant historical artifact rather than memorabilia of the Nazi party, that eBay considers it acceptable.

Re:Godwin and eBay

[J_Omega]

I'm surprised that the article itself didn't invoke Godwin's Law!

AFAIK*, there were both military and civilian versions of Enigma. The eBay piece doesn't appear to be military (no iron cross, no mil. ID, etc.,) so I'm going to assume that this was not a true "Nazi" piece. It was probably used in high-finance or something similar. So, in theory, this would be similar to selling an early model Volkswagen that was built for the general public.

* IANA Historian/Nazi Enthusiast/Cryptogeek

Hands on display at NSA Museum, Ft. Meade

[Stainless_Steel_Mous]

Last time I was there, you could play with one of these at the National Cryptoglogic Museum near Ft. Meade in Maryland, URL: http://www.nsa.gov/museum/ [nsa.gov]

THis place is _really_ worth a visit. The staff are all retired NSA staff and are glad to talk to you about the exhibits (now that the equipment is declassified!) They have an excellent exhibit on Cold War era supercomputers, with a Cray and a Connection Machine CM-5 on display.

Also worth a visit: Bletchley Park

[hcdejong]

Bletchley Park [bletchleypark.org.uk] not only has Enigma machines, they have recently completed a replica Bombe, and they're working on a replica Colossus.

Enigma 2007, now bundled with Vista Home Edition

[Ztringz]

Imagine one of these sitting inside your computer, clunking and whirring everytime you accessed SSL pages.

Make your own?

[nurb432]

http://www.xat.nl/enigma-e/ [www.xat.nl] - is an electronic *simulation*. That is no where close to 'making your own'.

Just Wondering

[Nom du Keyboard]

Just wondering where you'll find replacement light bulbs for it. And how about the batteries? If you have a machine like this, it would be fun to be able to actually use it.

Shipable in France

[Yvanhoe]

I wonder if I would be legally able to purchase this item from France. After all, this could be considered a nazi collector...

DIY? Tatjana Van Vark's is the one to beat

[toby]

Not exactly the Enigma, but beautiful [tatjavanvark.nl] nonetheless.

Re:

[garfi5h]

Try one of the 359 distros. See: http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/ 2007/07/too_many_linux.html [informationweek.com]
:)))

Re:

[Mr. Moose]

Yes. All VI commands are Enigma encrypted.

Re:

[denttford]

You mean there is an emacs compatibility mode for vi?

Re:

[Plutonite]

Your sarcasm is undetectable. You *were* being sarcastic, right?

Re:Only one for sale? Already Pointed Out!

[Nom du Keyboard]

100 posts and nobody has bothered to point out that you need two to play?

Actually that was already pointed out above, in a post on why buying only one of them might be so cheap. Perhaps you didn't decrypt that post properly.