Enigma Machine — how it worked

ENIGMA I READY

LAST — → —

LETTERS 0

Rotor order

LEFT

MIDDLE

RIGHT

Right rotor steps every key; left is slowest.

UKW

The reflector sends current back through the rotors — this is why the same settings both encode and decode.

Offsets the wiring inside each rotor relative to its letter ring.

Swaps letters in pairs before and after the rotors. Click a pair to remove it.

LAMPS

KEYS — click or type

DEBUG MONITOR live | LOG events

INPUT

—

OUTPUT

—

To decode: keep these settings, press RESET ROTORS, then type the OUTPUT back in — you'll get the INPUT.

Press a key → current flows through the plugboard, the three rotors, the reflector, back through the rotors, and lights a lamp.
The rotors step before each letter, so the same key gives a different result each time.
A letter can never encode to itself — the flaw the codebreakers exploited.