History note
In 1934 the Swedish cryptographer Boris Hagelin (1892-1983) designed a cipher machine for the French Army. He developed the machine and it was adopted by the United States Army as the Converter M-209 Cipher Machine. By 1942, 400 Hagelin machines a day were being produced at Groton, New York. Eventually, more than 140,000 were manufactured during the Second World War. The M-209 was used by the United States Army as late as the Korean War (1950-1953)
Physical description
Carrying Bag with strap
Encoding Machine The Converter M-209-B was a small, compact, hand-operated, tape printing, cryptographic mechanical device. It used a series of rotors to encipher and decipher radio transmitted tactical messages rapidly. When properly set and operated it enciphered a plain text message of any length and automatically printed the enciphered text on a plain tape in five-letter groups. The M-209-B also deciphered transmitted messages that had been previously enciphered on another Converter. The Converter printed the plain text on a paper tape with proper spacing between the words.
Handbook
Pencil
Spare Paper tape roll
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