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A very rare Siemens & Halske electro-mechanical cipher machine T-43, German, circa 1944, image 1

A very rare Siemens & Halske electro-mechanical cipher machine T-43, German, circa 1944, image 2

Lot 9^TP

A very rare Siemens & Halske electro-mechanical cipher machine T-43, German, circa 1944,

Amended

25 September 2019, 13:00 BST

London, Knightsbridge

£10,000 - £15,000

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A very rare Siemens & Halske electro-mechanical cipher machine T-43, German, circa 1944,

the working example Schlüsselfernschreibmaschine with keyboard and perforated paper tape feed mounted alongside, the mechanism in black painted metal case with hinged lid and glass cover and electrical power points, on wooden base, 23in (59cm) wide

Footnotes

This phantom of crypto-history, the T43 was one of the first machines to work on the principle of the One Time Pad and given the code name "TRASHER" by the staff at Bletchley Park. For each character typed on the keyboard a random character is read from the key tape and mixed with the original character by means of an XOR-operation. Once the key character is read from the paper tape it is destroyed by the built-in puncher and so making it impossible to be reused. This device is considered to be the successor to the cipher machine T52, which also came from Siemens & Halske, a forerunner of today's Siemens group.

It is considered that only 30-50 of these machines were built so this device is much rarer than the Enigma cipher machines and was used in the last months of the war by the Germans at the highest level including at OKW/CHI encryption department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht OKH and at the Marine and Foreign Offices. They were also deployed to operations in Norway, Spain and South America.

After the war, the Allied Target Intelligence Commission (TICOM) arranged for the transport of six T-43s to the USA together with German encryption specialists and a number of machines used in Norway were sent to Bletchley Park.

For further information see:
https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Hitlers-letzte-Maschinen-3435701.html
https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/siemens/t43/index.htm

Saleroom notices

Please note: This is a model T37 and not a T43 as stated in the catalogue. The revised estimate is £10,000-15,000.

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