Arthur Scherbius

Arthur Scherbius (30 October 1878 – 13 May 1929) was a German electrical engineer who invented the mechanical cipher Enigma machine. He patented the invention and later sold the machine under the brand name Enigma. Scherbius offered unequalled opportunities and showed the importance of cryptography to both military and civil intelligence. Scherbius was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His father was a businessman. He studied electrical engineering at the Technical University Munich and then went on to study at the Leibniz University Hannover, finishing in March 1903. The next year he completed a dissertation entitled "Proposal for the Construction of an Indirect Water Turbine Governor" and was awarded a doctorate in engineering (Dr.-Eng.). Scherbius subsequently worked for a number of electrical firms in Germany and Switzerland. In 1918 he founded the firm of Scherbius & Ritter. He made a number of inventions including asynchronous motors, electric pillows and ceramic heating parts. His research contributions led to his name being associated with the Scherbius principle for asynchronous motors. Scherbius applied for a patent (filed 23 February 1918) for a cipher machine based on rotating wired wheels that is now known as a rotor machine. His first design of the Enigma was called Model A and was about the size and shape of a cash register (50 kg). Then followed Model B and Model C, which was a portable device in which the letters were indicated by lamps. The Enigma machine looked like a typewriter in a wooden box. He called his machine Enigma which is the Greek word for "riddle". Combining three rotors from a set of five, each of the 3 rotor setting with 26 positions, and the plug board with ten pairs of letters connected, the military Enigma has 158,962,555,217,826,360,000 (nearly 159 quintillion) different settings. (5 × 4 × 3) × (263) × [26! / (6! × 10! × 210)] = 158,962,555,217,826,360,000. The firm's cipher machine, marketed under the name "Enigma", was initially pitched at the commercial market.