Homepage Cyberwar Cybersecurity Cyberspace C-Spionage C-Sabotage Gefährdung Kriminalität Computer Kommunikation mod. Systeme Der Mensch Beratung Bildung Fachberichte Information Kryptologie Emission Verschlüsselung Forschung Begriffe Recht Technik Verschiedenes
.R F I D  - Systeme   Verschlüsselungs- und Chiffriertechnik   Rotorsysteme   Computerkryptologie
Typex
Ansicht
Deutsch
Information
aus CRYPTO MACHINE
more information
TYPEX

HISTORY/DEVELOPMENT

Appendix 8 from the book "Betrayal At Pearl Harbor" by James Rusbridger and Eric Nave, provides and excellent account of the history and development of the Typex.

"As long ago as 1936, Lord Louis Mountbatten, then Fleet Wireless Officer with the Mediterranean Fleet, had recommended that the Royal Navy adopt a machine cryptograph for enciphering all its radio traffic as the German Navy had been doing since 1926 with the Enigma. The two Enigmas GCCS had bought in 1928 had lain idle while the Inter-Departmental Committee on Cipher Machines, formed in 1926, debated how best to use machine cryptography. But at the end of six years they had been unable to come to any decision. (Air 2/2720, Avia 8/355 & 8/356 and ADM 1/11770, PRO, Kew.)

In 1934, Group Captain O. G. Lywood, a Royal Air Force signals officer asked GCCS if he could borrow one of the Enigmas, and he took it to the RAF's Wireless Establishment at Kidbrooke, in southeast London. Together with Flight Lieutenant Coulson; Mr. E. W. Smith, the workshop foreman and Sergeant Albert Lemon, he set about building a copy of the Enigma using mainly parts from commercial teletypes then in service with the RAF.

The quartet busied themselves for three years and eventually produced a cumbersome machine they called the RAF Enigma with Type-X Attachments. Unlike the Enigma, which was the size and weight of a portable typewriter, Lywood's machine was huge and consisted of a standard Creed teletype with an Enigma rotor basket grafted on the front, which was machined from solid brass and alone weighed ten pounds. The entire machine weighed over 120 pounds and needed a 230 volt AC power source, unlike Enigma's battery system. The only advantage Typex had over Enigma was that it was able to print out the cipher and plain texts simultaneously on paper tape at fifty words per minute, whereas Enigma showed the text by means of lettered glow lamps that had to be recorded by the operator's assistant.

Lywood proudly demonstrated his brainchild to the Cipher Committee in 1937. They were unimpressed and refused to authorize any money to finance further development. Fortunately, the RAF decided to continue on their own and allowed Lywood to take his prototype to Creed & Company at Croydon, in south London, a small family firm run by the deeply religious Creed brothers, who led the work force in prayers before each day's work began.

Creed's main business was the production of electromechanical teletypes for the British Post Office (the forerunner of today's British Telecom). Since 1929 it had been owned by the ITT Corporation of America, but it seems that details of their work on Lywood's copy of Enigma did not get passed back to their American parent. With the help of Mr. F. E. Brake, Creed's managing director, and Mr. Kirk, their chief designer, twenty nine machines were built based on Lywood's prototype. These were called Type-X Mk I (the name Enigma having been quietly dropped) and were used to equip the main RAF headquarters. Creed then made a number of improvements and by 28 May 1937 had produced a much better machine they called Typex Mk II. This was shown to the Cipher Committee on 14 June, and they immediately approved an order for 350 Mk II machines at a cost of £107.8.0 each, which was enough to equip the entire RAF down to station level. A later attachment enabled Typex Mk II to produce punched tape using the standard five unit Baudot code (invented by the Frenchman Jean Baudot in the nineteenth century), but the Mk II could not work on-line with other Typex machines.

As orders grew, Creed transferred production to a new secret factory at Treforest in Wales. By September 1941, 3,232 Mk II machines had been produced at a cost of over £300,000. The Mk III Typex was hand operated and, although much smaller, still far more cumbersome than Enigma. Typex Mk IV was built around the Creed Model #7 teletype and printed out the text on rolls of message forms. Typex Mk VIII was the first model capable of interfacing with other Typex machines sending and receiving Morse code transmissions and automatically converting them into printed plain text. In 1942, after America entered the war, Typex Mk VIII was modified by Commander Don Seiler, USN, to interface on line with the American M-134 cryptograph known as ECM to the U.S. Navy and Sigaba to the U.S. Army. With the Typex converter, these became known as Communications Security Publications CSP-1700 or more usually as the Combined Cipher Machine (CCM). The reason for Seiler's converter was that U.S. regulations prohibited any foreign personnel from handling or seeing American cipher machines.