Re: Koch and Scherbius

At 17:39 11/12/2007, Mark Baldwin wrote:

>Is Bauer's article on the origins of the Enigma machine, published in Cryptologia in Jul 1999, the last word on this subject?
>Guidance welcome!
>
>Mark Baldwin

Mark...

The January 2003 issue of Cryptologia includes Karl de Leeuw's paper
"The Dutch Invention of the Rotor Machine, 1915-1923'. It sheds a bit
of light [controversy?] onto the discussion - the opening abstract
reads: "The rotor machine was invented in 1915 by two Dutch navy
officers, R.P.C. Spengler and Th. van Hengel, who were working at
the Navy Department in the Dutch East Indies. A prototype was built
by W.K. Maurits, a mechanical engineer, and tested during the summer
of that year on board the flagship of the Dutch Navy in the East
Indies on order of the fleet commander Rear Admiral F. Bauduin.
Though the Dutch Navy decided not to adopt the device for it
prevented the invention from being patented by the original inventors.
The Navy could not prevent the rotor machine from being patented,
however, by Hugo Alexander Koch - an engineer and businessman working
in close collaboration with Arthur Scherbius in Germany - who probably
became familiar with the idea through his brother-in-law, Huybrecht
Verhagen, a patent attorney working at the firm that had supported the
abortive patent application by the original inventors."

de Leeuw presented this paper at the NSA/CCH 2003 Symposium on
Cryptologic History.

Reference: 'The Dutch Invention of the Rotor Machine, 1915-1923',
de Leeuw, Karl, Cryptologia XXVII(1), pp73-94, January 2003.

Regards,

David

************************************************************
David Hamer                              [email protected]
http://home.comcast.net/~dhhamer       [email protected]
************************************************************   


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