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A lack of confidence in the security of their cipher systems led the Swiss into designing and building their own cipher machine. The principal developers were Hugo Hadwiger, Heinrich Emil Weber and Paul Glur. Their machine was called NEMA (NEue MAschine) and the first working examples were not ready until 1945. It wasn't until 1947 until the Swiss Army and Air Force completed evaluations and began to use the machine. About 650 of these machines were manufactured for the Swiss military.
NEMA was was designated as the Type T-D [Tasten-Drücker-Maschine] and the serial numbers take the format of T-D XXX. In principle, the NEMA machine worked like the Enigma , but it had 10 rotors (arranged to work as 4 pairs of 2), a reflector rotor, a special "red" rotor but lacked the plugboard. There were two variants of the NEMA machine - a 'training' model and a 'service or military' model, both of which were incompatible with each other. A message encrypted on the training model could not be read on the service model.
After many years of use, the NEMA machine was retired from service
by the Swiss government in 1992. Paul Glur, the last of the three
designers of the NEMA machine, passed away on 2 December 2007,
shortly after his 90th birthday. Please refer to David Hamer's web
document for a more in-depth description of the NEMA machine.
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| NEMA s/n TD494 overall view showing lid accessories. |