Patent
He got a patent in 1919, shortly before three others patented (in other countries) much the same thing. They were Arthur Scherbius in Germany, Hugo Koch in the Netherlands, and A Damm in Sweden. Hebern started a company to market the Hebern rotor machine; one of his employees was Agnes Meyer, who left the Navy in Washington DC to work for Hebern in California. Scherbius designed the Enigma, Koch sold his patent to Scherbius a few years later, and Damm's company — taken over by Boris Hagelin after his death — moved to Switzerland and is still in existence, as Crypto AG.
By September 1922 Edward Hugh Hebern was so sure of imminent huge orders from the Navy and Army that he began building a factory in Oakland. The striking three-story structure was built to accommodate 1,500 workers and had a luxurious office for Hebern. The 1923 stockholders’ report said it was “one of the most beautiful structures in California and said to be the only building in the State of true Gothic architecture throughout.” By the time it was completed the following year, it had cost somewhere between $380,000 and $400,000, and the company still had no income. In fact, its first sale, to the Italian government, was still twenty-three months away. Eventually Hebern would sell twelve of his early machines to the Navy, the Pacific Steamship Company of Seattle, and a few other buyers, but his ambitious building was repossessed. The Hebern-Code building still stands today at 829 Harrison Street in Oakland and is primarily used as Oakland’s Asian resource center.
Hebern's implementation of his idea was less secure than he believed, for William F. Friedman found at least one method of attack when it was offered to the US Government. Hebern's company did not prosper, his promotional efforts for it were questioned, and he was tried and convicted for fraud. Agnes Meyer returned to Washington to work for the Navy.
Friedman went on to design a much more secure and complex rotor machine for the US Army. It eventually became the SIGABA.
Read more about this topic: Edward Hebern
Famous quotes containing the word patent:
“This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The cigar-box which the European calls a “lift” needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like the man’s patent purge—it works”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)