HANCOCK — It was in 1985, at a flea market in Friedrichshafen, Germany, when Dr. Thomas Perera first laid eyes on a German Enigma cypher machine: the breakthrough encryption device used by the German military during the Second World War to code and decode telegraph messages. Although seldom known by the public at that time, Enigma machines were an important historical icon and technological innovation in the field of cryptology. Perera, a young professor of Neuroscience, un-aware of the Enigma machine’s his … (read more)
