Nema (machine)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Swiss Army used the Nema from 1947.

The Nema (also: NEMA ) is a rotor cipher machine from Switzerland . The acronym "NeMa" was formed from "New Machine" and refers to the successor to the German key machine Enigma .

commitment

The Nema was used for military and diplomatic purposes. There was a version for training purposes, a version never used in case of war and a version for the embassy radio.

history

The German Enigma K was the forerunner of the Nema.

The device was developed by Hugo Hadwiger , Heinrich Emil Weber and Paul Glur as a successor to the German Enigma K , which was used by the Swiss Army during World War II. From 1946 640 copies of the Nema were produced by Zellweger Uster AG. The designation TD (push button machine) was also used for the labeling of the devices and in the operating instructions .

In the Swiss Army, the Nema was largely replaced by the KFF-58/68 crypto radio teleprinter from the end of the 1950s, and the Nema was used in embassy radio until around 1976. In 1992 the Nema was declassified and in 1994 the army sold several copies to collectors.

technology

When the cover is open you can see the individual rollers.

The first difference to the Enigma concerns the number of rotors . In addition to four normal rotors, called contact rollers by Nema , the reflector is rotatably arranged. The reflector (on the left in the picture) is called the reversing roller on the Nema as well as on the Enigma , the red roller (on the right in the picture) as the entry roller . The improvement over the Enigma lies in the feed system of the rollers. While with the Enigma the feed happens like a counter, with the Nema the feed of each contact roller is controlled by its own indexing roller . Each time the button is pressed, several rollers move at the same time.

The three model variants mentioned at the beginning (model for training, mobilization model, model for embassy radio) are easiest to distinguish by the serial number: TD 100 to TD 199 belonged to the then Federal Political Department , TD 200 to TD 419 were training machines with the troops in use, and TD 420 to TD 740 were provided in case of mobilization.

At least three different sets of rollers were used on the embassy machines (reversing rollers A, B and T). The training machines are equipped with the following rollers: contact rollers A, B, C, D and indexing rollers 16, 19, 20, 21, 23/2. The war machines have the contact rollers A, B, C, D, E, F and the indexing rollers 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18 and 22/1.

literature

Web links

Commons : Nema  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Henk CA van Tilborg, Sushil Jajodia (ed.): Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security. Springer, New York 2011, page 281 f.