The Brilliant Engineering Behind the German Force's Enigma Machine

The 2014 film The Imitation Game made the story of brilliant mathematician Alan Turing and the story of his team of code-breakers available to the public, and it's impossible not to draw inspiration from the real-life story behind their endeavors. Alan Turing and his team built a machine the decipher the German enigma code during World War II, and breaking the code meant the collapse of the German forces.

This is because, the Enigma machine, which was developed back in the 1920s and looks like a simple typewriter, had a very specific and important purpose: It was used to keep messages secret, or in other words, encrypted. Granted, the machine is simple to describe; however, it was infuriating to break.

In this video by the YouTuber Jared Owen, you can learn more about the reason why the Enigma machine exists, how it was used, and the mechanism inside it that makes it tick. Once you learn how it worked, you'll be able to guess how difficult it was to crack the complex codes that came out of it.