The AVA Radio Company (

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

: ''Wytwórnia Radiotechniczna AVA'') was a Polish

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

firm founded in 1929 in

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

, Poland. AVA designed and built radio equipment for the

Polish General Staff Polish General Staff, formally known as the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces ( Polish: ''Sztab Generalny Wojska Polskiego'') is the highest professional body within the Polish Armed Forces. Organizationally, it is an integral part of the M ...

's Cipher Bureau, which was responsible for the radio communications of the General Staff's ''Oddział II'' (Section II, the General Staff's

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...

section). After the Cipher Bureau's

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

cryptologist This is a list of cryptographers. Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries. Pre twentieth century * Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi: wrote a (now lost) book ...

Marian Rejewski Marian Adam Rejewski (; 16 August 1905 – 13 February 1980) was a Polish people, Polish mathematician and Cryptography, cryptologist who in late 1932 reconstructed the sight-unseen German military Enigma machine, Enigma cipher machine, aided ...

in late December 1932 deduced the wiring in the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

military

Enigma Enigma may refer to: *Riddle, someone or something that is mysterious or puzzling Biology *ENIGMA, a class of gene in the LIM domain Computing and technology * Enigma (company), a New York–based data-technology startup *Enigma machine, a famil ...

rotor cipher machine, AVA built Enigma "doubles" as well as all the electro-mechanical equipment designed at the Cipher Bureau to expedite

decryption In cryptography, encryption (more specifically, encoding) is the process of transforming information in a way that, ideally, only authorized parties can decode. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plai ...

of Enigma ciphers.

History

AVA's four directors were

Edward Fokczyński Edward Fokczyński was one of the four directors of the AVA Radio Company, an electronics firm established in Warsaw, Poland, in 1929. AVA produced radio equipment for the Polish General Staff's Biuro Szyfrów, Cipher Bureau, which was responsib ...

Antoni Palluth Antoni Palluth (11 May 1900, Pobiedziska, Province of Posen – 18 April 1944) was a founder of the AVA Radio Company. The company built communications equipment for the Polish military; the work included not only radios but also cryptographic e ...

Ludomir Danilewicz Ludomir Danilewicz (1905–1960) was a Polish engineer and, for some ten years before the outbreak of World War II, one of the four directors of the AVA Radio Company in Warsaw, Poland. AVA designed and built radio equipment for the Polish General ...

, and his younger brother

Leonard Danilewicz Leonard Stanisław Danilewicz was a Polish engineer and, for some ten years before the outbreak of World War II, one of the four directors of the AVA Radio Company in Warsaw, Poland. Cipher Bureau work AVA designed and built radio equipment for th ...

. The company took its name from the combined radio

callsign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assi ...

s of the Danilewicz brothers (''TPAV'') and Palluth (''TPVA''). When the company was being formed in 1929, the Danilewicz brothers were

short-wave Shortwave radio is radio transmission using radio frequencies in the shortwave bands (SW). There is no official definition of the band range, but it always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz (appr ...

ham Ham is pork from a leg cut that has been preserved by wet or dry curing, with or without smoking."Bacon: Bacon and Ham Curing" in '' Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 2, p. 39. As a processed meat, the term '' ...

s" and students at the

Warsaw Polytechnic The Warsaw University of Technology () is one of the leading institutes of technology in Poland and one of the largest in Central Europe. It employs 2,453 teaching faculty, with 357 professors (including 145 titular professors). The student body ...

. In 1927, Fokczyński had opened a small radio workshop on

New World Street ''Nowy Świat'' (), known in English as New World Street, is one of the main historic thoroughfares of Warsaw, Poland. It comprises part of the Royal Route (''Trakt królewski'') that extends from Warsaw's Royal Castle and Old Town, south to K ...

. Sporadically he had received orders from the Cipher Bureau, whose Captain

Maksymilian Ciężki Maksymilian Ciężki (; Samter, Province of Posen (now Szamotuły, Poland), 24 November 1898 – 9 November 1951 in London, England) was the head of the Polish Cipher Bureau's German section (''BS–4'') in the 1930s, during which time— ...

knew Fokczyński from his 1919–22 army service. Beginning in 1929, the modest shop, ten minutes' walk from the General Staff building, which housed the Cipher Bureau, was transformed into AVA. The company subsequently moved to new facilities in southern Warsaw's

Mokotów Mokotów () is a district of Warsaw, the capital city of Poland. It is densely populated, and hosts many companies and foreign embassies. Only a small part of the district is lightly industrialised (''Służewiec Przemysłowy''), while the majori ...

district. Early on, the fledgling company was severely under-capitalized. All four directors, however, had other jobs; and soon the Cipher Bureau came to the rescue with an order for eight 10-watt short-wave radio stations, which became the embryo of Section II's radio network. AVA also won other clients, including the

Polish Navy The Polish Navy (; often abbreviated to ) is the Navy, naval military branch , branch of the Polish Armed Forces. The Polish Navy consists of 46 ships and about 12,000 commissioned and enlisted personnel. The traditional ship prefix in the Polish ...

and Professor Lugeon of the Warsaw Meteoroglogical Institute, for whom AVA built, to his design, an ''atmoradiograf'' that registered disturbances in the atmosphere; this, Leonard Danilewicz later recalled, was the unheralded beginning of radioastronomy. The

General Staff A military staff or general staff (also referred to as army staff, navy staff, or air staff within the individual services) is a group of officers, Enlisted rank, enlisted, and civilian staff who serve the commanding officer, commander of a ...

's Cipher Bureau was responsible for the radio communications of the General Staff's Section II (Intelligence section). The Cipher Bureau entrusted the design and construction of the equipment to AVA. The work was carried out on a

cost-plus A cost-plus contract, also termed a cost plus contract, is a contract such that a contractor is paid for all of its allowed expenses, ''plus'' an additional payment to allow for risk and incentive sharing.Enigma machine The Enigma machine is a cipher device developed and used in the early- to mid-20th century to protect commercial, diplomatic, and military communication. It was employed extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II, in all branches of the W ...

. The Poles' subsequent reading of German

cipher In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...

s laid the foundation for the

western Allies Western Allies was a political and geographic grouping among the Allied Powers of the Second World War. It primarily refers to the leading Anglo-American Allied powers, namely the United States and the United Kingdom, although the term has also be ...

Ultra Ultra may refer to: Science and technology * Ultra (cryptography), the codename for cryptographic intelligence obtained from signal traffic in World War II * Adobe Ultra, a vector-keying application * Sun Ultra series, a brand of computer work ...

cipher-breaking operations, beginning seven years later, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. Now, in January 1933, just as

Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

was coming to power in Germany, AVA quickly produced a "double" of the Enigma machine; by mid-1934, it had made over a dozen. In 1934 or 1935, AVA built the

cyclometer The cyclometer was a cryptologic device designed, "probably in 1934 or 1935," by Marian Rejewski of the Polish Cipher Bureau's German section (BS-4), to catalog the cycle structure of Enigma permutations, thereby facilitating the decryption o ...

, a device designed by Rejewski to prepare a "

card catalog A library catalog (or library catalogue in British English) is a register of all bibliographic items found in a library or group of libraries, such as a network of libraries at several locations. A catalog for a group of libraries is also ...

" that facilitated the decryption of Enigma messages. In 1938 AVA built the "

cryptologic bomb The ''bomba'', or ''bomba kryptologiczna'' (Polish for "bomb" or "cryptologic bomb"), was a special-purpose machine designed around October 1938 by Polish Cipher Bureau cryptologist Marian Rejewski to break German Enigma-machine ciphers. Etym ...

," invented by Rejewski about October 1938. This was an electrically powered aggregate of six Enigmas that took the place of some one hundred workers. Six bombs were built before September 1939. Actual assembly of the cyclometers, "bombs" and

Lacida The Lacida, also called LCD, was a Polish rotor cipher machine. It was designed and produced before World War II by Poland's Cipher Bureau for prospective wartime use by Polish military higher commands. Lacida was also known as Crypto Machine ...

cipher machines was carried out not at the AVA facilities but in Room 13 (the "Clock Room") at the Cipher Bureau in the General Staff building—and, from 1937, at the new Cipher Bureau center in the

Kabaty Woods The Stefan Starzyński Kabaty Woods Nature Reserve () is a woodland park located in southern Warsaw, between two major arteries, Puławska Street, Warsaw, Puławska and Łukasz Drewny Streets. Administratively the park belongs to southern Warsaw ...

south of Warsaw. No one had access to this room except the head of the Cipher Bureau,

Gwido Langer Lt. Col. Karol Gwido Langer ( Zsolna, Austria-Hungary, 2 September 1894 – 30 March 1948, Kinross, Scotland) was, from at least mid-1931, chief of the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau, which from December 1932 decrypted Germany's milita ...

, the head of its German section (''B.S. 4''),

, and personnel employed there:

, his younger brother

Leonard Leonard or ''Leo'' is a common English language, English masculine given name and a surname. The given name and surname originate from the Old High German ''Leonhard'' containing the prefix ''levon'' ("lion") from the Greek wikt:Λέων#Greek, Λ ...

, and the specialist in precision mechanics, Czesław Betlewski. In July 1941, Marian Rejewski and Henryk Zygalski were asked to test the security of the Lacida at the Cadiz Center, near

Uzès Uzès (; ) is a commune in the Gard department in the Occitanie region of Southern France. Uzès lies about north-northeast of Nîmes, west of Avignon, and southeast of Alès. History Originally ''Ucetia'' or ''Eutica'' in Latin, Uzès wa ...

(free zone). The device had apparently not been rigorously tested before approval, because the two mathematicians decrypted a message in less than two hours. Their dismayed boss gave up using the machine.

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History

See also

References

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Further reading