Ottico Meccanica Italiana
Ottico Meccanica Italiana (short: OMI ; German " Italian Optomechanics " ) is a former Italian optomechanics company. It specialized in photogrammetry . It manufactured instruments and measuring devices for aerial photography , in particular for the evaluation of photograms .
history
The company was founded in 1926 by the Italian Umberto Nistri (1895–1962) in Rome . After his death, his son Raffaello (1920–1981) took over management of the company for almost twenty more years. In the early 1980s, OMI was finally taken over by the traditional Italian helicopter manufacturer Agusta .
Little is known that in addition to optomechanical products, OMI also secretly developed a rotor cipher machine in 1939, immediately at the beginning of World War II . The machine, called OMI Alpha , was constructed similarly to the German Enigma D , but had five rotors (and not just four). Sometimes it is also referred to as the "Italian Enigma ". After the war, around 1954, i.e. during the early days of the Cold War , the OMI Criptograph followed , then the OMI Cryptograph-CR towards the end of the 1950s and finally the OMI Cryptograph-CR Mk II in the early 1960s .
Web links
- Ottico Meccanica Italiana in the Crypto Museum , accessed on May 31, 2017.