Emanuel Nobel asked Boris Hagelin to supervise a small Swedish company, A.B. Cryptograph, which manufactured cipher machines, invented by the Swedish engineer Arvid Damm. In 1925 he took over management and started developing new machines. In 1932 A.B Cryptoteknik replaced the liquidated A.B. Cryptograph. Hagelin promoted his popular C-35 cipher machine during the Second World War in the United States. Adapted for the U.S. Army under the name M-209, this machine became a huge success and Hagelin made a fortune.

After WWII Hagelin moved to Zug in neutral Switzerland and established Crypto AG in 1952. This relocation was required since Sweden considered Cryptographic equipment as weapons, and thus prohibited their export. The pre-war reputation of mechanical "Hagelin Cryptos" devices and the need for enciphered telegraph equipment helped the firm to grow and laid the foundation for a new generation of electronic cipher equipment. Boris Hagelin died in 1983 at the age of 91.

In 1925 the Swedish General Staff contacted A.B. Cryptograph to design a machine that would be superior to the German Enigma. Hagelin developed a prototype for evaluation called B-21. The B-21 was approved for the Swedish General Staff and Hagelin also sold the machine to several other countries. Its principle was based on Arvid Damm's simplified rotors, a 5 x 5 grid design.

The machine had a keyboard, 2 rotors of which the stepping was controlled by two pairs of pin-wheels and a display with 25 lamps that presented the output of the encipherment or decipherment. The machine was operated on 110 or 220 volt and the lamp panel was powered by a battery. Depressing a key would close two contacts, each contact in one of two groups of five contacts. The signal then passed through two rotors to the 25 lamps. Interchangeable leads, in series with the rotors, could be connected as desired.

This machine was the first to apply pin-wheels, a feature that was used in many of its successors. A pin-wheel is a disk with a number of axial holes in which pins are located. These pins can be moved either to the left or to the right side of the disk. On one side, these pins are inactive, on the other side active. With each step, the pin-wheel moves one pin position. Several different pin-wheels with different numbers of pins without a common factor are used to obtain a very long key period.

In 1932 the French Army was interested in the B-21 but asked for two important modifications. The machine had to be portable and should be able to print the text. Hagelin developed the B-211 which could be operated either with electric power or by hand with a crank. He replaced the lamp panel with a type-wheel printing mechanism and the ciphering circuits were powered by a battery. About 500 B-211 machines were built. In 1940 Hagelin installed a workshop in Sweden with the profits of the successful B-211 and A.B. Cryptograph was renamed in A.B. Ingenieursfirma Cryptoteknik. More technical details are found on the B-21 page.

Already in 1934, the French Cipher Bureau asked Hagelin to develop a compact cipher machine that could also print. Hagelin got the idea to adapt a calculating mechanism from a money changer into a small crypto device. The infamous pin-and-lug machines were born.

The first machine, the C-35, consisted of a drum with 25 bars, five pin-wheels (identical to the ones used in the B-21) and an alphabet-knob/type-wheel with reciprocal alphabet (type-wheel alphabet reversed to knob alphabet). By using a reciprocal encryption, it was very easy to switch between enciphering and deciphering. The text was printed on a small paper ribbon. The compact device had the size of a small lunch box. Military personnel could put it in a side pocket of the uniform.

To encipher a letter the operator turned the alphabet knob to the desired letter and turned the handle at the right side of the machine. The type-wheel, fixed to the alphabet knob, then turned a number of steps, depending on the settings of the machine. The enciphered letter was printed on the paper ribbon or the operator could read off the reciprocal alphabet on the knob.

The wheel-pins were set each day according to a key sheet. Before each enciphering of a new message, the operator would set a new start position of the 5 pin-wheels on the exterior. The movable slide-bars on the drum contain fixed lugs. When the drum is revolved with the handle outside the machine, the different lugs pass 5 cams that are under control of the pins on the five pin-wheels. If a pin is active, the cam of that wheel will push a passing lug to the left. The slide-bar on which that lug is fixed will also move to the left and comes out of the drum as a small tooth.

An improved version with protective casing and another lug arrangement, and later on with movable lugs on the drum, was designated C-36 and. Its successor, the C-38, had six pinwheels. The lugs on this machine could slide on the drum bars in one of 5 active or an inactive position. This improvement, together with the larger wheel period, provided a very large key space. Another version, designated BC-543, was fitted with a keyboard.

In 1940 Hagelin went to the USA to promote his C Type machines which resulted in the largest sale ever of crypto machines. The US military selected his C-38 as tactical ciphering device and designated it as M-209. By the end of the Second World War over 140,000 of these small M-209 machines were produced in the US. You can also download our M-209 Simulator.

Although the C-36 and C-38 were ideal for tactical purposes they were insufficient for the enciphering of high-level message traffic that could resist extensive cryptanalysis. An improved version would open the door to the market of high-level military and diplomatic encryption. Hagelin went back to the drawing table to improve his C Machines.

Several improvements were introduced in the C-52 model. The rotation of the pin-wheels became irregular. Whether a wheel moved or not on a given cycle depended on the pin positions of the previous wheels. For the 6 wheel model there was now the choice between 12 pin-wheels, with 25, 26, 29, 31, 34, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 46 and 47 pins. The number of slide-bars was increased to 32. A second type wheel was added to print both plain and ciphered text at the same time on a split paper ribbon and it was possible to set a relative position between the primary and secondary type wheel. Also, a type wheel with letters that could be rearranged became available. The later CX-52 model has 6 pinwheels with 47 pins each and a more flexible pinwheel advancing system as the C-52, resulting in a complex and highly irregular wheel movement.

Instead of developing a version with fixed keyboard like the BC-543 machine, the C-52 could be fitted with a separate keyboard attachment, called B-52 which included the electric motor to drive the drum of the C-52. The configuration with keyboard was designated BC-52. The very popular C-52, CX-52 and BC-52 were sold all over the world. See also our page with the technical details on the C-52 and CX-52 and you can download the BC-52 simulator.

The CX-52 RT has a tape reader to use of one-time tapes. Another development, based on the 52 series was the PEB machine designed to make enciphering easier for telex traffic. This was a combination of an adapted BC-52 model, called BC-621, connected to the PEB-61 tape punch and reader.

On demand of the French Gendarmerie, a small pocket device was developed with the name CD-55. Two years later, the CD-57 was manufactured. Input and output consisted of a ring with an alphabet and a rotatable disk inside. The alphabet was displaced by pressing a lever with the thumb. The displacement depended on the setup of 6 small pin-wheels, similar to those used in the C Type machines. About 12,000 of these pocket models were sold to different countries. The CD-57 RT has an option to use one-time tapes (random five bit punched tapes).

Hagelin goes On-line

After abandoning the TMX all-in-one Ciphering Teleprinter prototype, Hagelin decided in 1948 to develop the Telecrypto Machine, an on-line crypto device, connected between a standard teleprinter and the line, which could encipher and decipher the telex signals in real-time.

Hagelin did research on various types of mechanical encryptions and developed several different prototypes. One special version of the C Machine was the C-36 with Autokey, which had a second drum, connected via gears to the indicating disk. The device never came into production because of the problems, inherent to the Autokey system, to recover the message when an error during transmission occurred.

The TMX-53 was a ciphering teleprinter but its development was stopped as Crypto AG could not compete with major teleprinter firms. Instead, Crypto AG focused on the Telecrypto Machine which could be connected to standard teleprinter machines.

An advanced electromechanical cipher machine was developed and designated HX-63. The HX-63 had 9 rotors with 41 circuits of which the surplus wires were looped back on the outside (somewhat similar to the KL-7 ADONIS). All circuits could be rearranged, and the rotors performed irregular movements like the C-52 series. All this provided an incredible key space of 10⁶⁰⁰. Manufacture of the HX-63 was abandoned due to the development of fully electronic cipher machines.

The CBI-53 was a random number generator with a printer, which used 40 type wheels and mixing chambers which held 26 steel balls of which one ball was a bit larger than the other 25 balls. After mixing, the balls were run into a tube until the thick ball blocked the tube. The number of balls in the tube was measured and determined the rotation of the type wheel.

Crypto AG kept playing a leading role in the development of new crypto systems after the transition from mechanical and electromechanical machines to fully electronic crypto equipment. In the 1970s, they developed the H-460 and H-4605 text encryption machines, the HC-500 CRYPTOMATIC series with the text encryption machines HC-550, HC-570, HC-580 and the HC-520 pocket device. In the 1980s came the HC-5205 Electronic Message Unit for use with radio and the HC-5700 Message Workstation.

Digitalization and the Internet brought new challenges and opportunities in the early 1990s. Crypto AG developed a range of network solutions such as the PSTN encrypted HC-2203 phone, HC-4221 fax encryption, the secure IP VPN Crypto Mobile Client HC-7835, Crypto Desktop HC-9300 and HA-2500 encrypted VoIP telephone.

They also developed various fixed and mobile military encryption system. Encrypted military IP Networks for HF, VHF and UHF, and secure satellite messaging systems, the SECOS radio series, MultiCom HC-2650 radio encryption and HC-2605 Terminal, the Crypto Field Terminal all-in-one messaging system and much more.

The magazine special 10th Anniversary of Cryptomagazine gives a good overview of their products and customers. All network solutions and radio equipment are found on the Crypto International AG website.