Arvid dam

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Prototype of a key machine from Arvid Damm

Arvid Gerhard Damm (born May 27, 1869 in Angered , Älvsborgs län ; †  1927 ) was a Swedish cryptologist , engineer and inventor . He is one of the early inventors of the rotor principle for encryption .

life and work

Damm registered his invention of a rotor key machine as patent number 52,279 with the Swedish Patent Office on October 10, 1919. He is one of several inventors who, between 1915 and 1919, independently proposed the use of rotors for cryptography in five different countries .

In 1915, the two Dutch naval officers Theo A. van Hengel and RPC Spengler invented a rotor key machine in Batavia (then the capital of the Dutch East Indies ). However, they were not allowed to apply for a patent for their invention. In 1917 Edward Hugh Hebern followed in the United States , but he did not apply for a patent for his idea until 1921. Arthur Scherbius in Germany had applied for a patent in 1918 for a rotor machine which he called ENIGMA . Three days before Damm, Hugo Alexander Koch registered a patent for his invention of a rotor machine in the Netherlands .

Damm died in 1927.

Further development

The company Aktiebolaget (AB) Cryptograph (German: Kryptographen- Aktiengesellschaft ) was founded in 1915 to further develop, manufacture and sell Damm's inventions. After Boris Hagelin joined AB Cryptograph in 1922 and took over management in 1925, Hagelin took over the company after Damm's death, reorganized it and changed its name to AB Cryptoteknik . Damm's inventions have resulted in some successful encryption machines over time. One of the most common was the M-209 , which was used by the Americans during World War II . At that time, Hagelin fled from Sweden to Switzerland, where the company was rebuilt under the name Crypto AG in Zug , under which it still exists there today.

literature

  • Friedrich L. Bauer : Deciphered Secrets. Methods and maxims of cryptology. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Springer, Berlin et al. 2000, ISBN 3-540-67931-6 .
  • Kris Gaj, Arkadiusz Orłowski: Facts and myths of Enigma: breaking stereotypes. Eurocrypt, 2003, pp.106-122. PDF; 0.1 MB
  • Boris Hagelin : The Story of the Hagelin Cryptos . Cryptologia, 18 (3), July 1994. pp 204-242.
  • David Kahn , The Codebreakers . 1967 (2nd edition 1996). Chapter 13.
  • Rudolf Kippenhahn : Encrypted messages, secret writing, Enigma and chip card . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1999. ISBN 3-499-60807-3

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl de Leeuw and Jan Bergstra (eds.): The History of Information Security - A Comprehensive Handbook . Elsevier BV, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2007, p. 389. ISBN 978-0-444-51608-4
  2. ^ Karl de Leeuw: The Dutch Invention of the Rotor Machine, 1915-1923 . Cryptologia. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 27.2003,1 (January), pp. 73-94. ISSN  0161-1194 .
personal data
SURNAME Dam, Arvid
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Damm, Arvid Gerhard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish cryptologist, engineer and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Addressed
DATE OF DEATH 1927