Ernst Richard Ritter

Ernst Richard Ritter (born  September 12, 1882 in Merseburg , †  July 22, 1936 in Zwickau ) was a German engineer and entrepreneur . In 1911 he founded the company Dipl.-Ing. E. Richard Ritter & Co. , which sold electrical equipment from a number of manufacturers in Berlin. In 1918 this company also presented the first prototype of an encryption device. In 1920 he was one of the two founders of the Scherbius & Ritter company , in which the first model (A) of the Enigma cipher machine , which later became famous, was developed and manufactured.

Life

The Enigma A (1923) was the first in a long model series

Little is known about his life. He was born as one of four children of the German piano maker Carl Richard Ritter (1836–1917) and his wife Agnes Ritter, b. Knoblauch, born when his family lived in Merseburg, shortly before they moved to the neighboring town of Halle (Saale) for business reasons in 1882 . While his two brothers Alfred in 1894 and Willi in 1900 followed in the footsteps of father and grandfather Carl Friedrich Ritter and employees of the C. Rich piano factory. Became a knight , Ernst Richard went his own way. He studied engineering and from 1911 ran the Dipl.-Ing. Company at Schiffbauerdamm 30 in the Mitte district of Berlin . E. Richard Ritter & Co. , which sold electrical household appliances. In 1918, when Arthur Scherbius had applied for a patent for an encryption device, this company took over its commercial representation. In 1920 he founded the Scherbius & Ritter company in Berlin-Wannsee together with Scherbius (1878–1929) . Various technical products were developed and manufactured here, with the heating pad as the main product. In addition, which was first model (A) of the famous remainder thereafter cipher Enigma z. T. developed by Scherbius & Ritter .

Fonts

• The Electric House , Verlag Schubert & Co., 1927.

literature

• Friedrich L. Bauer : Historical Notes on Computer Science . Springer, Berlin 2009. ISBN 3-540-85789-3 .
• Simon Singh : Secret Messages . Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2000, p. 160. ISBN 0-89006-161-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Friedrich L. Bauer: Historical Notes on Computer Science . Springer, Berlin 2009, p. 49. ISBN 3-540-85789-3 .
2. ↑ Louis Kruh, Cipher Deavours: The commercial Enigma - Beginnings of machine cryptography . Cryptologia, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 26.2002,1 (January), p. 1. ISSN  0161-1194 Retrieved October 24, 2016. PDF; 0.8 MB ( Memento of the original from April 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Ernst Richard Ritter: The Electric House ( Memento of the original from October 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 24, 2016.