[Beowulf] OT: three rotor Enigma machine for sale

[Robert G. Brown]

On Sat, 17 Sep 2011, Douglas J. Trainor wrote:

> "A version of the three rotor Enigma machine -- used by the German military to encrypt messages, the code of which was subsequently cracked by a team at the legendary Bletchley Park complex -- will be auctioned at Christie's on September 29." --
>
>  http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/09/16/enigma.machine.auction/index.html

Yeah, I saw this and lusted after it in my heart for a bit, but then I
though -- I can sell the house, the second house, the boat, the cars,
and put in the starting bid in on it and hope all of the actual people
with money in the world are home with bad colds on that day, but then
where would I keep it if I actually won?  It's a bit irregular to make a
very comfortable pillow sleeping naked under an overpass...

So instead it will go to some wealthy high tech entrepreneur who cannot
possibly appreciate it the way I would, or worse, some Eurotrash snob
who is "investing" in it as an inflation hedge, and thinks that all of
the little keys and wires are very nifty but who is more interested in
the provenance of this particular machine -- did it come out of a
U-boat, or a diplomatic office, or...

I'll just have to settle for modern multirotor pseudorngs.  Not as
pretty, but a lot faster...

    rgb

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Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu