Japnese Red Analog |
Japanese Red Analog
In the era of electromechanical crypto machines, an analog is a device developed to "crack " a cipher.William Friedman, Chief of the Army's Signal Intelligence Service, envisioned an electromechanical machine to rapidly decrypt RED messages. It would work much like the Japanese Cipher Machine Type A, however funding was not available.
For more than two years, the Army cryptoanalysts used handmade analogs that consisted of thin, plastic, sixty-point disks with the "sixes and twenties" continuously written along the periphery of each disk
In the late 1930's, the Navy Yard model shop constructed the first electromechanical RED analog. The machine mimicked the actions of the Cipher Machine Type A with its commutators for the sixes and twenties plus the plugboard. A braking wheel controlled the controlled the stepping motion.