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← Germany Hand
Manual slide ruler cipher system
- under construction
Reihenschieber (English: series slide) was a
manual cipher system developed in
West-Germany (BRD)
in 1957 for use by the German Army, the Bundeswehr.
The device was manufactured by SGL Carbon AG Werk Ringsdorf in Bonn (Germany)
and was used for the encryption of high-grade traffic until 1962.
It is also known as NSN 5810-12-127-0897 and NSN 5810-12-127-6168.
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The Reihenschieber (RS) consists of three parts: a frame, a set of 26
removable bars and a sliding window, similar to a mathematical slide
ruler from the days before the pocket calculator. At any time, 10 of
the 26 bars are installed on the ruler, with the black rectangular
'lock' at the left keeping them in position. Each bar has four sides,
one of which is orientated upwards.
Furthermore, each bar can be installed in any of 10 positions, by fitting
it onto the corresponding pin of the rectangular lock. There are 10 pins –
one for each bar – allowing 10 different offsets.
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Reihenschieber was jointly developed in 1957 by the Zentralstelle für
das Chiffrierwesen 1 (ZfChi), the Mehlem section of the
Bundesnachrichtendienst 2 (BND)
and the Fernmeldedienststelle der Bundeswehr 3 (FmDSt Bw) [1].
At the time (1958) Reihenschieber was approved for (German) national messages
of all levels of classification and key material was supplied by the FmDSt Bw.
The system was declassified in 1992, exactly 30 years after its last use.
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ZfChi = Central Office for Cryptology. Started life as
the Mehlem section of the BND, with former WWII OKW-Chi operatives like
Dr. Erich Hüttenhain and Wilhelm Fenner.
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BND = Federal Intelligence Service.
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FmDSt Bw = Signal Office of the Bundeswehr.
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For encryption with the Reihenschieber, a message should consist
of the letters (A-Z) and the numbers (0-9) only.
The rules for preparing a plaintext
message were nearly the same as those of WWII, and punctuation marks were
encoded as per NATO standard (see below).
The maximum length of a message was 1000 characters.
Longer messages were sent in two or more parts. 1
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Character
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Replaced by
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Remark
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ä
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ae
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A-umlaut
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Ö
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oe
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O-umlaut
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ü
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ue
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U-umlaut
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?
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QUES
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Question mark
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-
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DASH
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:
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CLN
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Colon
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(...)
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PAREN ... PAREN
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Parenthesis or brackets
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.
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PD
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Point or full-stop
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,
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CMM
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Comma
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/
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SLANT
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Slash
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§
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PARA
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Paragraph
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"..."
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QUOTE ... UNQUOTE
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Text quotation
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q
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k
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Plaintext 'q' is replaced by 'k'
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0 ··· 9
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q0 ··· 9q
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Numbers are bracketed by 'q'
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BERLIN
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yBERLINy
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Names are bracketed by 'y'
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Longer messages are divided into two or more parts, each with a maximum
size of 100 characters, according to Central Service Regulation
55/10 (ZDv 55/10), which is still classified.
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- Anleitung zum Bundeswehr-Handschlüssel (Reihenschieberverfahren)
Operating instructions for the Army hand cipher (German).
ZDv 55/12, January 1958. - not in collection -
- Anleitung zum Bundeswehr-Handschlüssel (Reihenschieberverfahren)
Operating instructions for the Army hand cipher (German).
ZSV 55/512, March 1960. 23 pages. Secret. 1
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Declassified by Bundeswehr on 9 July 1992.
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© Crypto Museum. Created: Saturday 02 July 2016. Last changed: Friday, 23 February 2018 - 22:49 CET.
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