Believed to produce an unbreakable code, the Enigma was used to encrypt German transmissions. The settings of the Enigma were capable of producing roughly 150 quintillion possible solutions (Enigma Machine).

“Enigma Machine.” Central Intelligence Agency.

“Wartime Picture of a Bletchley Park Bombe.” Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Developed by Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman, the Bombe was a machine that was used to aid the decryption of Enigma communications. Like the Bomba, it would be used to speed up hand-worked decryption methods by checking all possible settings in order to find a solution that could crack the encryption (Wilcox 2002, 9-10).

Developed by Tommy Flowers, the Colossus machine was another device used by the English to decrypt German transmissions specifically encrypted by the German’s Lorenz machine, a device used to encrypt high priority communications of German officials, such as Hitler and his generals. It is regarded as one of the first electronic computers (Colossus).

“Wartime photo of Colossus 10.” United Kingdom Public Record Office, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.