The rarest and non-crackable (until Alan Turing came) technology in the history of World War 2 is now being auctioned. Have you heard about the German's 'Enigma machine'? If yes, history taught us many things about this piece of a communication device used by the Nazis. Care to know how much is the exact price of the Enigma?
How much is the auctioned 'Enigma machine'
The 'Enigma machine' is one of the most remarkable equipment back in World War 2 wherein the Allies and the Axis forces fight against each other.
This machine serves as the main communication tool, made by the German Nazis, to propagate their plans and activities in conquering lands amid the war.
Now that the war has ended. The Enigma machine is now being auctioned at one of the biggest auction houses, Christie's.
According to Christie's website via ZDNet, the rare 1944 four-rotor M4 Enigma cipher machine has won the top estimated auction amount of exactly $437,955.
"The machine's use of 4 rotors, instead of 3, and the operator's ability to select these from a pool of 8 interchangeable rotors, together with stricter operating procedures, gave the M4 Enigma a much higher level of encryption," Christie's noted.
What does it do?
This rare item is a very precious tech back in the World War for Nazis. This is their hidden weapon to secretly pass information among their comrades without the Allies knowing anything.
Admiral Karl Dönitz, the commander of the German U-boat fleet, first ordered the creation of this specific technology. It was an unfair fight between the two forces until British Mathematician Alan Turing and Joe Desch in Dayton, Ohio discovered a way to breaking the code of the M4 encryption.
In the middle of 1943, Turing and his team decipher every info that the German Nazis were relying on the said equipment. The Allies forces knew where to put their soldiers to stop the Nazis from conquering more lands.
"For 10 months - a long time in the war - the M4 defeated the previously successful decryption of Allied codebreakers," said on the auction post. "So confident was Dönitz in the M4 Enigma that, in his later trial at Nuremberg, he declared that the Allies could not possibly have deciphered his Enigma messages; instead he attributed the destruction wreaked upon his fleet to advanced radar and direction-finding alone."
Another auction house called Sotheby sold the highest price of one Enigma machine in 2019 for nearly $1 million. It has a different price since this Enigma was found exactly at Nazi groups' bunker.
