In olden days, highly confidential information is sent in the form of coding. They used to convert the information into coding and send, where the people at receiver end used to decode and get the information. This coding and decoding device is called as Nazi Coding Machine. In the same way, Adolf Hitler had a Nazi coding device to create encrypted messages.

This Nazi Coding Device used by Hitler was bought by the volunteers in the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley Park, England. In a recent auction, the device is sold on eBay for just $14. The military-issue Lorenz Tele-printer was advertised as a German telegram machine for £9.50 (equivalent to about $14).

This Coding Device was used during the World War II. “One of my colleagues was searching on eBay and came across what seemed to be a German Lorenz Tele-printer, so we bought it and drove to Essex and there it was in a garden shed under some rubbish, the Lorenz Tele-printer in its carrying case,” said John Wetter, a volunteer at the museum. He then paid 10 GBP for the keyboard.

The “Tele-printer” looks like a typewriter and it converts messages entered in plain German before the Lorenz cipher machine itself used 12 individual wheels to encrypt the message. Comparing to the Enigma machine which sent coded messages to Germany’s front line units, the Lorenz coding system was used to send Hitler’s orders exclusively to commanders and the officials.

According to the reports of the museum, it said that about 200 Lorenz SZ42 cipher machines were in existence during World War II, with historians believing that most of them were destroyed by the German forces upon their retreat at the end of World War II. Only four are known to have survived. The existence of the machines remained a secret until the 70s.

John Wetter said that “a motor that powers the machine is missing and he hopes that if public find it or build one, we can show the entire World War II coding process.”