TheCodeBreakers
device was the cipher machine of the future, he began selling shares in
his firm to raise capital. Since it controlled scores of patents in the
United States and abroad, not only on the cipher machine but on such
other pioneering devices as electric typewriters and directional indicators
for cars, he had no trouble selling about $1,000,000 worth of stock to
2,500 shareholders, mostly from Oakland, where he then lived. But he
overexpanded, building a grandiose factory, and in 1926 Hebern Electric
Code, Inc., went into bankruptcy.
Hebern refused to give up. Pinning his hopes on the Navy, he
incorporated the International Code Machine Company in Reno, Nevada.
Things started to look up in 1928 when he sold four five-rotor machines
to the Navy at $750 for each machine and $20 for each rotor. Hebern
and a handful of employees had built them by hand, and he himself then
drove them to the 12th Naval District Office in San Francisco
annaabi.ee 
