Kryha

In the history of cryptography, the Kryha machine was a device for encryption and decryption, appearing in the early 1920s and used until the 1950s. The machine was the invention of Alexander von Kryha (born 31.10.1891 in Charkow, Ukraine, committed suicide in Baden-Baden 26 May 1955). During the Second World War, Kryha worked as an officer for the German Wehrmacht. There were several versions; the standard Kryha machine weighed around five kilograms, and was totally mechanical. A scaled down pocket version was introduced later on, termed the "Lilliput" model. There was also a more bulky electrical version.
The machine was used for a time by the German Diplomatic Corps, and was adopted by Marconi in England.
The security of the machine was evaluated by the mathematician Georg Hamel, who calculated the size of the key space. The US Army was also contacted to see if they would be interested in using the machine, and were persuaded to accept a challenge message to evaluate the security of the device. The challenge message, 1135 characters long, was solved by William Friedman, assisted by Solomon Kullback, Frank Rowlett and Abraham Sinkov, in 2 hours and 41 minutes.
More information, including images, on the Wikipedia page .
Category:Cryptography
Category:20th century