Edward Hebern

Edward Hugh Hebern was an early American inventor of rotor machines, devices for encryption. Born in Streator, Illinois, on April 23, 1869, he was admitted at the age of six, with three of his siblings, to the Illinois Soldiers' and Sailors' Home in Normal, Illinois, and after his discharge in 1883 went to Odin, Illinois, where he worked on a farm. He received a patent in 1918, shortly before Arthur Scherbius in Germany, Hugo Koch in the Netherlands and Arvid Damm in Sweden patented much the same idea. Hebern started a company to market the Hebern rotor machine, and one of his employees was Agnes Meyer. William Friedman went on to design a much more secure and complex rotor machine for the US Army, which eventually became the SIGABA. Hebern died on February 10, 1952.