TheCodeBreakers
variable number of projecting pins that he had used in his Swedish army
machine.
Hagelin shrank the device to 6 X 4V& X 2 inches— smaller than the
base of a standard telephone set—and to under three pounds, or about
the weight of a dictionary-sized codebook. To operate it, the encipherer,
after first setting the key elements, twirled a knob at the left to the
plaintext letter, and revolved a handle at the right. The mechanism spun,
and a little typewheel printed the output on a gummed tape. Hagelin
even managed to have it print the ciphertext in five-letter groups and the
plaintext in normal word-lengths (by using a rare letter as a word-
spacer). Its speed averaged 25 letters per minute.
In essence, it is a gear with a variable number of teeth. These turn a
cipher alphabet through as many positions as there are teeth for that
particular encipherment. The various parts of the mechanism interact to
annaabi.ee 
