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Russian copy of Hagelin B-211
- wanted item
K-37 was a mechanical cipher machine, designed and build by the Russians
in the USSR, shortly before the start of WWII. The machine was a functional
copy of the Hagelin B-211, but was missing the manually wiring input and
output plugboard. The K-37 was used by the Russians throughout WWII and
even for a few years after the war. The machine is also known as 'Crystal'.
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The K-37 is in fact a copy of the
Hagelin B-211,
which in turn was a further
development of the B-21.
The machine printed directly onto a paper strip and had a built-in
wheel-based encryption mechanism that was based on a matrix.
The original Hagelin machine featured a 5 x 5 matrix in order to
accomodate 25 letters of the Latin alphabet.
The Russians modified it and used a 5 x 6 matrix, so that 30
(of the 33) characters of the Cyrillic alphabet could be used.
Strangely, the Russians omitted the input and output plugboard of the
original design, so that the machine became cryptographically weaker.
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The image above shows a top view of the K-37 after the top cover has
been removed. Immedately at the front is the keyboard with its 30 keys.
The rear part contains the cipher wheels (left), a printer (center)
and a set of relays (right) that prevented the electric current from
flowing in the wrong direction. When typing, the entire mechanism is
driven by a motor that is mounted at the rear right. Paper is fed past the
print head through a metal gutter behind the keyboard.
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- Boris Hagelin, 100 Jahre Boris Hagelin 1892-1992
Memoires of Boris Hagelin (German).
Crypto A.G., Crypto Hauszeitung Nr. 11, September 1992.
- Boris Hagelin, The Story of Hagelin-Cryptos
Crypto A.G., Zug, Spring 1981. Based on [6].
- Christos Triantafyllopoulos, The Soviet K-37 'Crystal' cipher machine
Christos military and intelligence corner. 14 June 2012.
Retrieved November 2012.
- VV Babievsky, LS Butyrsky, DA Larin; Soviet cryptographic service 1920-1940
Website Agentura.ru (Russian).
Retrieved June 2012.
- Crypto Museum, Hagelin B-21 and B-211
- TICOM I-58, Interrogation of Dr. Otto Buggisch of OKW.CHI
8 August 1945. Declassified. p. 5.
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