Cipher machine
A mechanical or electromechanical device that automated ciphers that had previously been carried out by hand.
In the late 1910s, Arthur Scherbius in Germany and Edward Hebern in the United States developed rotor machines independently of each other. Each keystroke moved the rotors, so the substitution alphabet changed letter by letter, giving a period far longer than that of a short Vigenère key. SIGABA, Typex, Hagelin's machines and the Soviet Fialka followed during and after the Second World War. Enigma and the Hagelin M-209 were broken. No public record shows SIGABA ever being broken. The machine was seldom the weakest link; the procedures around it usually were.