Secret Codes and the Enigma Machine
On 9th of February 2006 Solihull Junior School took part in the first of a two-part videoconference with the University of Cambridge. The conference was about the history of code breaking, with specific focus on the enigma machine used by the Germans during the Second World War.
Taking part in the videoconference was St Peters School, Wolverhampton; Wyedean School, Gloucester; John Kelly Girls TC, London and 20 other schools from the Solihull area. Close to 300 people were present in our Bushell Hall, watching the conference unfold on the very large screen. Clare Ellis, who was the expert on code breaking, delivered the lecture which was beamed live from the university.
Claire showed the schools the inside of the now extremely rare enigma machine. The Germans would set the machine by twisting the three plates inside it, which would link the wires inside the machine. For each letter you typed, a different letter would seem to randomly light up. Then all the enigma operators would receive a sheet of paper that said how to set the plates in their machine for every day. Once they had all set their machines they could communicate in enigma code. We also learned about the scytale code where you wrapped a strip of paper around a rod, or in our case a pencil, and the letters would read as a sentence. We also learnt about the Caesar shift code where Julius Caesar changed one letter to another about 12 letters further down the alphabet for his own secret code.
The last code we learnt about was the Mary Queen of Scots code where she substituted letters for symbols.
The second videoconference took place on the 22nd March where Claire Ellis talked about how the Enigma Code was cracked and we told her how we deciphered many different types of codes that she had put on the videoconferencing website. Groups of students from all schools around the country explained how they had made up their own codes and presented their ideas live to the videoconference audience.
If you’d like to see the Junior School’s presentation you can use this web address.
http://www.motivate.maths.org/conferences/conf81/c81_schools.shtml
It was a very informative and enjoyable experience and we continued to carry out code breaking activities in our maths lessons.
By Dominic Reddi J4P