Missed Buying an Enigma Machine

I like serendipity when it happens -- especially when it concerns something as odd as the current head of the National Security Agency and the German World War II encryption device known as the " Enigma Machine ."

NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander testified on May 5 at a hearing of the House Armed Services' Terrorism and Unconventional Threats Subcommittee. He started off his testimony, on cyberspace as a warfighting domain, with a trip down memory lane and the success that U.S. and British cryptographers had in breaking the code in the Enigma Machine used by the Germans to encrypt their military messages during World Wart II.

A couple of hours later I sat down to read the Wall Street Journal . On the last page of the paper's front section ran across an advertisement offering an Enigma Machine for sale. M.S. Antiques in New Orleans placed the ad and described it as an "incredibly significant piece of world history."

Bill Rau, owner of the antique store, told me his machine was "liberated" from SS headquarters in Prague in 1945 by an individual he did not identify. This person then stored it in his attic until last year, when ownership passed to a relative who lived in Iowa.

Rau said he offered the Enigma Machine for sale for six weeks and sold it this past weekend at a show in Chicago, before the ad in the Journal ran, to a private collector whom he did not identify.

The price: $98,500. That's a deal (and maybe a reflection of the economy) because Rau said Christie's auction house sold an Enigma Machine in June 2008 for $104,500.

Despite the discount, it's probably a good idea Rau sold his machine before I put in my bid because a $98,500 Visa charge could be a marriage defining moment.

Photo courtesy Courtesy M.S. Rau Antiques