Be a code breaker: Enigma machines up for auction
You can own a piece of Bletchley Park history thanks to Christie's online auction of two Enigma machines and other rarely seen ciphers.
One of the cipher machines up for auction is the 1941 M4 Enigma, which was one of the first 4-Rotor M4 Enigmas to be manufactured by the Germans for use by their Navy. This original Enigma machine is in working condition and has a very unusual feature that includes the appearance of numbers on the top and bottom rows of keys.
"All of the Enigma-encoded messages sent during the war consisted of only letters," states the Christie's auction page. "The full name of a number was spelled out in letters whenever a number was required. Therefore, the purpose of placing numbers on the keyboard keys is unclear. They are not seen in later Marine Enigmas." Currently, the bid is at $240,000.
