Child’s Toy to Enigma Machine in Six Steps

How many times have you been sitting around your house, wishing you could send messages coded in the same manner as the Nazis circa 1940? Well now with a little bit of elbow grease, you too can own your very own Enigma machine!

Please imagine the above as a late-night Sci-Fi Channel infomercial.

Instructables user sketchsk3tch was one such man in need of an Enigma machine, but didn’t want to commit the considerable cash required to get a real one. While browsing a thrift shop he noticed a child’s toy with a full keyboard and thought to himself, like anyone would, that it would make a great Nazi code machine. Because why not?

Having made his dream a reality, he’s shared his work online. In just six easy steps, he walks you through everything you need to know to start coding and decoding.

During the Second World War, Nazi Germany relied on the ingenious Enigma code machines to keep their communications secret. Great effort was expended by the Allies in breaking this code, which in turn spurred the development of computers, made Alan Turing a legend,  and helped establish cryptography as a key aspect of military intelligence. If that’s not reason enough to have one, or at least a facsimile of one, then I don’t know what is.

Or you can be lazy, and remember that there’s an app for that.

(Instructables via Hack A Day)