Mike Ledermueller in Toronto took the completion of his Enigma-E kit
a bit further than most of us.
He went out of his way to add some super realistic features to
it, and compare it to the real Enigma M4 on our website. Mike certainly has
mechanical skills and has a very fine eye for detail.
The image on the right show the final results of his efforts and you have
to look really well to see that it's not a real M4. Real keys have been added
to the keyboard and the lamp panel has been raised somewhat. The displays
are covered by an oval window, just like on the real machine.
If you wonder where the eight push-buttons for setting the wheels went:
they are hidden under the top lid, and are operated by pressing the thumbwheel
aside each display. At the top right, the 4V socket of the M4 has been replaced
by the 9V DC socket of the Enigma-E, along with an appropriate note.
There is even a real lock.
Mike got interested in the Enigma story after reading Simon Singh's book
'The Code Book' and wanted to posess at least a few parts of a real Enigma.
When he discovered that this was out of his price range, he asked for
an Enigma-E kit for his birthday and completed the project when his wife
was away for work for several months.
For his replica, Mike used the
M18340
from the Crypto Museum website as his reference.
Whenever possible, every detail of the
M4 in the Crypto Museum collection
was copied, including the small print.
Please take some time to go through Mike's detailed photographs
in his DropBox.
They show all stages of building his kit and preparing a
case for it. And watch the videos below.
Mike Ledermueller's electronic variant of the Enigma M4
The above video shows the final results of Mike's work. Click the image
to start the video and discover how every small detail actually works.
If you wonder how he achieved all this, check out the detailed photographs
in his DropBox. And if you have a few minutes, why not watch the time-lapse
recording of assembling the Enigma-E PCB.
It plays back at one minute per second.
Time-lapse recording of assembling an Enigma-E board
