Ludomir Danilewicz

Ludomir Danilewicz (ca.1935)

Ludomir Danilewicz (*  15. May 1904 in the village Niewinnomyskaja in Nevinnomyssk ; †  25. February 1971 in London ) was a Polish engineer and radio amateur . Together with his younger brother Leonard Danilewicz as well as Edward Fokczyński and Antoni Palluth in 1929 he founded the Wytwórnia Radiotechniczna AVA (German: Funkechnische Fabrik AVA) , a small company based in the Polish capital Warsaw , which specializes in the manufacture of special electromechanical and radio equipment for the Biuro Szyfrów (BS) (German: "Chiffrenbüro") of the Polish General Staff.

On the Polish Enigma replica, buttons (1), lamps (2) and sockets (7) were simply arranged alphabetically , as on the German Enigma-C .

The three letters "AVA" for their new company were formed by the young company founders as enthusiastic radio amateurs as a combination of their amateur radio call signs "TPAV" by Ludomir and Leonard Danilewicz and "TPVA" by Palluth. At that time, in 1929, Ludomir had not finished his engineering training, but was still a student at the Warsaw University of Technology . Later, in the 1930s, together with the three other company founders and a few other AVA employees, such as the precision mechanic Czesław Betlewski , he developed and manufactured important cryptanalytic machines for the BS cipher office , such as the Zyklometer and the Bomba , which were used against the German Enigma machine . They also made replicas of the German machine .

In September 1939 he had to experience the German invasion of his country that triggered World War II. Like the other employees of the AVA plant and the BS , he had to flee from the advancing Wehrmacht . Like most of his colleagues, he probably went first via Romania to France and finally to England. Ludomir and his brother Leonard survived the war. There is a joint US patent 3,143,290 of the Danilewicz brothers with the title "Rotary Converter" from August 4, 1964, in which the London district of Wembley Park is specified as his place of residence .

Since 1927 he was married to the Polish writer Maria Danilewicz-Zielińska (1907-2003).

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 .
• David Kahn : The Code Breakers - The Story of Secret Writing . Macmillan USA, Reissue 1974, ISBN 0-02-560460-0 .
• David Kahn: Seizing the Enigma - The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, USA, 2012, ISBN 978-1-59114-807-4 .
• Władysław Kozaczuk : Enigma - How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two . Edited and translated by Christopher Kasparek, Frederick, MD, University Publications of America, 1984, ISBN 0-89093-547-5 .
• Władysław Kozaczuk, Jerzy Straszak, Enigma - How the Poles Broke the Nazi Code . Hippocrene Books, 2004, ISBN 0-7818-0941-X .
• Władysław Kozaczuk: Secret Operation Wicher . Bernard et al. Graefe, Koblenz 1989, Karl Müller, Erlangen 1999, ISBN 3-7637-5868-2 , ISBN 3-86070-803-1 .
• Władysław Kozaczuk: Under the spell of Enigma . Military publishing house, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-327-00423-4 .
• Hugh Sebag-Montefiore : ENIGMA - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, ISBN 0-304-36662-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Chris Christensen: Review of IEEE Milestone Award to the Polish Cipher Bureau for `` The First Breaking of Enigma Code '' . Cryptologia . Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 39.2015,2, p. 185. ISSN  0161-1194 .
2. ↑ David Kahn: Seizing the Enigma - The Race to Break the German U-Boat codes 1939 -1943 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, USA, 2012, p. 81. ISBN 978-1-59114-807-4 .