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Lambert Simnel

Lambert Simnel (c. 1477 – after 1534) was a pretender to the throne of England. In 1487, his claim to be Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, threatened the newly established reign of Henry VII (1485–1509). Simnel became the figurehead of a Yorkist rebellion organised by John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. The rebellion was crushed in 1487. Simnel was pardoned because of his tender years, and was thereafter employed by the royal household as a scullion.

Early life
Simnel was born around 1477. His real name is not known—contemporary records call him John, not Lambert, and even his surname is suspect. Different sources have different claims of his parentage, from a baker and tradesman to an organ builder. Most definitely, he was of humble origin. At the age of about ten, he was taken as a pupil by an Oxford-trained priest named Richard Simon (or Richard Symonds / Richard Simons / William Symonds) who apparently decided to become a kingmaker. He tutored the boy in courtly manners and contemporaries described the boy as handsome. He was taught the necessary etiquette and was well educated by Simon.

Pretender
Simon noticed a striking resemblance between Lambert and the sons of Edward IV, so he initially intended to present Simnel as Richard, Duke of York, son of King Edward IV, the younger of the vanished Princes in the Tower. However, when he heard rumours (at the time false) that the Earl of Warwick had died during his imprisonment in the Tower of London, he changed his mind. The real Warwick was a boy of about the same age, having been born in 1475, and had a claim to the throne as the son of George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, King Edward IV's executed brother. Warwick was a touchstone for Yorkist affections, and people still wore his badge of the bear and ragged staff.

According to James A. Williamson, Simnel was merely a figurehead for a rebellion that was already being planned by the Yorkists: "He was merely a commonplace tool to be used for important ends, and the attempt to overthrow Henry VII would have taken place had Simnel never existed. The Yorkist leaders were determined on a serious push, rising of their party in England supported by as great a force as possible from overseas."

Simon spread a rumour that Warwick had actually escaped from the Tower and was under his guardianship. He gained some support from Yorkists. He took Simnel to Ireland where there was still support for the Yorkist cause, and presented him to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, the Earl of Kildare. Kildare was willing to support the story and invade England to overthrow King Henry. Simnel was paraded through the streets, carried on the shoulders of "the tallest man of the time", an individual called D'Arcy of Platten (this was evidently Sir William Darcy, an ally of Kildare, who is known to have been exceptionally tall). When Henry heard about what was going on, he arranged for the real Earl of Warwick to be taken from the tower and paraded through London, presumably to disprove the rumours of his death or escape. This did not prevent the rebellion, likely because insufficient infrastructure and methods of transport meant news spread slowly.

"Coronation"
On 24 May 1487 Simnel was crowned in Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin as "King Edward VI". He was about 10 years old. Lord Kildare collected an army of Irish soldiers under the command of his younger brother, Thomas FitzGerald of Laccagh.

John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln, formerly the designated successor of his uncle the late King Richard III, joined the conspiracy against Henry VII. He fled to Burgundy, where Warwick's aunt Margaret of York, the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, kept her court. Lincoln claimed that he had taken part in young Warwick's supposed escape. He also met Viscount Lovell, who had supported a failed Yorkist uprising in 1486. Margaret collected 2,000 Flemish mercenaries and shipped them to Ireland under the command of Martin Schwartz, a noted military leader of the time. They arrived in Ireland on 5 May. King Henry was informed of this and began to gather troops.

Battle of Stoke Field
On 5 June 1487 Simnel's army—mainly Flemish and Irish troops—landed on Piel Island in the Furness area of Lancashire and were joined by some English supporters. However, most local nobles, with the exception of Sir Thomas Broughton, did not join them. Henry had been receiving information about events in Ireland, although it was vague and conflicting. Thanks to existing plans to invade Ireland he was able to react speedily to the invasion and had begun mustering troops as early as February. A lack of English support led Simnel's army to change their plans, deciding their only chance of success was one swift and decisive battle. On 15 June 1487, they set up camp near the small village of East Stoke, Nottinghamshire, near Newark-on-Trent. The royal army of 12,000 set up camp 10 mi away.

On 16 June 1487 the rebels clashed with the King's army, at the Battle of Stoke Field in Nottinghamshire, and were defeated. Lincoln and Thomas FitzGerald were killed. Lovell went missing and was rumoured to have escaped to Scotland with Sir Thomas Broughton and hidden to avoid retribution.

Simons avoided execution due to his priestly status, but was imprisoned for life. Kildare, who had remained in Ireland, was pardoned. Chrimes, S.B. Henry VII Yale University Press 1999 pp. 260–261

Later life
King Henry pardoned young Simnel (probably because he recognised that Simnel had been merely a puppet in the hands of adults) and put him to work in the royal kitchen as a spit-turner. When he grew older, he became a falconer. Almost no information about his later life is known. He died some time after 1534. He seems to have married, as he is probably the father of Richard Simnel, a canon of St Osyth's Priory in Essex during the reign of Henry VIII.

Cultural depictions
In the 1972 BBC serial The Shadow of the Tower Simnel was portrayed by Gary Warren.

In 1996 Blyth Power's album Out From Under the King included a song, Lambert Simnel.

In 2006 Steeleye Span's album Bloody Men included a song, The Story of the Scullion King, about Simnel.

In 2013, a sketch parodying Who Do You Think You Are in season 5, episode 7 of Horrible Histories depicted Simnel's claim to the throne.

In the 2017 Starz miniseries The White Princess, Simnel is portrayed by Max True.

The 2017 children's book The Player King, by Avi, offers a fictionalized first-person account of the key period of Simnel's life.

title: Lambert Simnel


text:
Photios I of Constantinople

Photios I (Φώτιος, Phōtios; c. 810/820 – 6 February 893), also spelled Photius, was the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople from 858 to 867 and from 877 to 886. He is recognized in the Eastern Orthodox Church as Saint Photios the Great.

Photios is widely regarded as the most powerful and influential church leader of Constantinople subsequent to John Chrysostom's archbishopric around the turn of the fifth century. He is also viewed as the most important intellectual of his time – "the leading light of the ninth-century renaissance". He was a central figure in both the conversion of the Slavs to Christianity and the Photian schism, and is considered "[t]he great systematic compiler of the Eastern Church, who occupies a similar position to that of Gratian in the West," and whose "collection in two parts...formed and still forms the classic source of ancient Church Law for the Greek Church."

Photios was a well-educated man from a noble Constantinopolitan family. Photios's great uncle was a previous patriarch of Constantinople, Saint Tarasius. He intended to be a monk, but chose to be a scholar and statesman instead. In 858, Emperor Michael III (r. 842–867) decided to confine Patriarch Ignatius in order to force him into resignation, and Photios, still a layman, was appointed to replace him. Amid power struggles between the pope and the Byzantine emperor, Ignatius was reinstated. Photios resumed the position when Ignatius died (877), by order of the Byzantine emperor. The new pope, John VIII, approved Photios's reinstatement. Catholics regard as legitimate a Fourth Council of Constantinople (Roman Catholic) anathematizing Photios, while Eastern Orthodox regard as legitimate a subsequent Fourth Council of Constantinople (Eastern Orthodox), reversing the former. The contested councils mark the end of unity represented by the first seven Ecumenical Councils.

Photios was canonized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1847.

Secular life
Most of the popular sources treating Photios's life are written by persons hostile to him. The chief contemporary authority for the life of Photios is his bitter enemy, Nicetas the Paphlagonian, the biographer of his rival Ignatios. Modern scholars are thus cautious when assessing the accuracy of the information these sources provide. Little is known of Photios's origin and early years. It is known that he was born into a notable family and that his uncle Saint Tarasius had been the patriarch of Constantinople from 784–806 under both Empress Irene (r. 797–802) and Emperor Nikephoros I (r. 802–811). During the second Iconoclasm, which began in 814, his family suffered persecution since his father, Sergios, was a prominent iconophile. Sergios's family returned to favor only after the restoration of the icons in 842. Certain scholars assert that Photios was, at least in part, of Armenian descent while other scholars merely refer to him as a "Greek Byzantine". Byzantine writers also report that Emperor Michael III (r. 842–867) once angrily called Photios "Khazar-faced", but whether this was a generic insult or a reference to his ethnicity is unclear.

Although Photios had an excellent education, we have no information about how he received this education. The famous library he possessed attests to his enormous erudition (theology, history, grammar, philosophy, law, the natural sciences, and medicine). Most scholars believe that he never taught at Magnaura or at any other university; Vasileios N. Tatakes asserts that, even while he was patriarch, Photios taught "young students passionately eager for knowledge" at his home, which "was a center of learning". He was a friend of the renowned Byzantine scholar and teacher Leo the Mathematician.

Photios says that, when he was young, he had an inclination for the monastic life, but instead he started a secular career. The way to public life was probably opened for him by (according to one account) the marriage of his brother Sergios to Irene, a sister of Empress Theodora, who upon the death of her husband Emperor Theophilos (r. 829–842) in 842, had assumed the regency of the Byzantine Empire. Photios became a captain of the guard (prōtospatharios) and subsequently chief imperial secretary (protasēkrētis). At an uncertain date, Photios participated in an embassy to the Abbasids of Baghdad.

Photios achieved a dazzling reputation as a scholar. In a feud with Patriarch Ignatios, Photios invented a fanciful theory that people have two souls, for the sole purpose of tricking Ignatios into embarrassing himself by being seen to take it seriously, whereupon Photius withdrew his proposal and admitted he had not been serious. The historian John Julius Norwich described this as "perhaps the only really satisfactory practical joke in the whole history of theology."

Patriarch of Constantinople
Photios's ecclesiastical career took off spectacularly after Caesar Bardas and his nephew, the youthful Emperor Michael, put an end to the administration of the regent Theodora and the logothete of the drome Theoktistos in 856. In 858, Bardas found himself opposed by the then Patriarch Ignatios, who refused to admit him into Hagia Sophia, since it was believed that he was having an affair with his widowed daughter-in-law. In response, Bardas and Michael engineered Ignatios's confinement and removal on the charge of treason, thus leaving the patriarchal throne empty. The throne was soon filled with a kinsman of Bardas, Photios himself, who was tonsured a monk on December 20, 858, and on the four following days was successively ordained lector, sub-deacon, deacon and priest, and then on Christmas Day, the patronal feast of Constantinople's cathedral, Hagia Sophia, Photios's was consecrated a bishop and installed as patriarch.

The confinement and removal of Ignatios and the speedy promotion of Photios at first caused only internal controversy within the Church of Constantinople, and in 859 a local council was held, examining the issue and confirming the removal of Ignatios and election of Photios. In the same time, partisans of Ignatios decided to appeal to the Church of Rome, thus initiating ecclesiastical controversy on an ecumenical scale as the Pope and the rest of the western bishops took up the cause of Ignatios. The latter's confinement and removal without a formal ecclesiastical trial meant that Photios's election was uncanonical, and eventually Pope Nicholas I sought to involve himself in determining the legitimacy of the succession. His legates were dispatched to Constantinople with instructions to investigate, but finding Photios well ensconced, they acquiesced in the confirmation of his election at a synod in 861. On their return to Rome, they discovered that this was not at all what Nicholas had intended, and in 863 at a synod in Rome the pope deposed Photios, and reappointed Ignatius as the rightful patriarch, triggering a schism. Four years later, Photios was to respond on his own part by calling a Council and excommunicating the pope on grounds of heresy – over the question of the double procession of the Holy Spirit. The situation was additionally complicated by the question of papal authority over the entire Church and by disputed jurisdiction over newly converted Bulgaria.

This state of affairs changed with the murder of Photios's patron Bardas in 866 and of Emperor Michael III in 867, by his colleague Basil the Macedonian, who now usurped the throne. Photios was deposed as patriarch, not so much because he was a protégé of Bardas and Michael, but because Basil I was seeking an alliance with the Pope and the western emperor. Photios was removed from his office and banished about the end of September 867, and Ignatios was reinstated on November 23. Photios was condemned by the Council of 869–870, thus putting an end to the schism. During his second patriarchate, however, Ignatios followed a policy not very different from that of Photios.

Not long after his condemnation, Photios had reingratiated himself with Basil, and became tutor to the Byzantine emperor's children. From surviving letters of Photios written during his exile at the Skepi monastery, it appears that the ex-patriarch brought pressure to bear on the Byzantine emperor to restore him. Ignatios's biographer argues that Photios forged a document relating to the genealogy and rule of Basil's family, and had it placed in the imperial library where a friend of his was a librarian. According to this document, the Byzantine emperor's ancestors were not mere peasants as everyone believed but descendants of the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia. True or not, this story does reveal Basil's dependence on Photios for literary and ideological matters. Following Photios's recall, Ignatios and the ex-patriarch met, and publicly expressed their reconciliation. When Ignatios died on October 23, 877, it was a matter of course that his old opponent replaced him on the patriarchal throne three days later. Shaun Tougher asserts that from this point on Basil no longer simply depended on Photios, but in fact he was dominated by him.

Photios now obtained the formal recognition of the Christian world in a council convened at Constantinople in November 879. The legates of Pope John VIII attended, prepared to acknowledge Photios as legitimate patriarch, a concession for which the pope was much censured by Latin opinion. The patriarch stood firm on the main points contested between the Eastern and Western Churches: the demand of an apology to the Pope, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Bulgaria, and the addition of the filioque to the Nicene creed by the Western church. Eventually, Photios refused to apologize or accept the filioque, and the papal legates made do with his return of Bulgaria to Rome. This concession, however, was purely nominal, as Bulgaria's return to the Byzantine rite in 870 had already secured for it an autocephalous church. Without the consent of Boris I of Bulgaria (r. 852–889), the papacy was unable to enforce its claims. Pope Adrian III chose a policy of appeasement and sent between 884 and 885 bishop Theodosius of Oria to transmit notice of his election and a synodal letter to Photios about faith and the filioque. Photios also promoted a policy of religious reconciliation with the Armenian kingdom to the east of the empire. He sought to bridge the confessional differences between the Greek Orthodox and Armenian churches on two separate occasions, once in 862 and again in 877, but his efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful.

During the altercations between Emperor Basil I and his heir Leo VI, Photios took the side of the Byzantine emperor. In 883, Basil accused Leo of conspiracy and confined the prince to the palace; he would have even have Leo blinded had he not been dissuaded by Photios and Stylianos Zaoutzes, the father of Zoe Zaoutzaina, Leo's mistress. In 886, Basil discovered and punished a conspiracy by the domestic of the Hikanatoi John Kourkouas the Elder and many other officials. In this conspiracy, Leo was not implicated, but Photios was possibly one of the conspirators against Basil's authority. Basil died in 886 injured while hunting, according to the official story. Warren T. Treadgold believes that this time the evidence points to a plot on behalf of Leo VI, who became emperor, and deposed Photios, although the latter had been his tutor. Photios was replaced by the Byzantine emperor's brother Stephen, and sent into exile to the monastery of Bordi in Armenia. It is confirmed from letters to and from Pope Stephen that Leo extracted a resignation from Photios. In 887, Photios and his protégé, Theodore Santabarenos, were put on trial for treason before a tribunal headed by senior officials, headed by Andrew the Scythian. Although the sources sympathetic to Photios give the impression that the trial ended without a conviction, the chronicle of Pseudo-Symeon clearly states that Photios was banished to the monastery of Gordon, where he later died. Latin sources confirm that while he did not die in a state of complete excommunication, having been reinstated by a council which was approved by Pope John VIII, his ecclesiastical career was viewed in utter disgrace by Catholic authorities and many of his theological opinions were condemned posthumously. Yet it appears that he did not remain reviled for the remainder of his life.

Photios continued his career as a writer throughout his exile, and Leo probably rehabilitated his reputation within the next few years; in his Epitaphios on his brothers, a text probably written in 888, the Emperor presents Photios favorably, portraying him as the legitimate archbishop, and the instrument of ultimate unity, an image that jars with his attitude to the patriarch in the previous year. Confirmation that Photios was rehabilitated comes upon his death: according to some chronicles, his body was permitted to be buried in Constantinople. In addition, according to the anti-Photian biographer of Ignatius, partisans of the ex-patriarch after his death endeavored to claim for him the "honor of sainthood". Furthermore, a leading member of Leo's court, Leo Choirosphaktes, wrote poems commemorating the memory of several prominent contemporary figures, such as Leo the Mathematician and the Patriarch Stephen, and he also wrote one on Photios. Shaun Tougher notes, however, that "yet Photios's passing does seem rather muted for a great figure of Byzantine history [...] Leo [...] certainly did not allow him back into the sphere of politics, and it is surely his absence from this arena that accounts for his quiet passing."

Veneration
After his death, Photius began to be venerated as saint in environs of Constantinople. His name features in a manuscript of the Typicon of the Great Church of Constantinople dated to the middle of the tenth century, where he is referred to a saint with a day of commemoration of February 6. According to Dvornik, Photius must have been venerated as a saint in the second half of the tenth century at the very latest.

The contemporary Eastern Orthodox Church venerates Photius as a saint, with his feast day being February 6.

Assessments
Photios is one of the most famous figures not only of 9th-century Byzantium but of the entire history of the Byzantine Empire. One of the most learned men of his age, and revered – even by some of his opponents and detractors – as the most prolific theologian of his time, he has earned his fame due to his part in ecclesiastical conflicts, and also for his intellect and literary works.

Analyzing his intellectual work, Tatakes regards Photios as "mind turned more to practice than to theory". He believes that, thanks to Photios, humanism was added to Orthodoxy as a basic element of the national consciousness of the medieval Byzantines, returning it to the place it had had in the early Byzantine period. Tatakes also argues that, having understood this national consciousness, Photios emerged as a defender of the Greek nation and its spiritual independence in his debates with the Western Church. Adrian Fortescue regards him as "one of the most wonderful men of all the middle ages", and stresses that "had [he] not given his name to the great schism, he would always be remembered as the greatest scholar of his time". Yet, Fortescue is equally adamant of his condemnation of Photios' involvement in the Schism: "And yet the other side of his character is no less evident. His insatiable ambition, his determination to obtain and keep the patriarchal see, led him to the extreme of dishonesty. His claim was worthless. That Ignatius was the rightful patriarch as long as he lived, and Photius an intruder, cannot be denied by any one who does not conceive the Church as merely the slave of a civil government. And to keep this place Photius descended to the lowest depth of deceit."

Bibliotheca
The most important of the works of Photios is his Bibliotheca or Myriobiblon, a collection of extracts and abridgements of 280 volumes of previous authors (usually cited as Codices), the originals of which are now to a great extent lost. The work is especially rich in extracts from historical writers.

To Photios, we are indebted for almost all we possess of Ctesias, Memnon of Heraclea, Conon, the lost books of Diodorus Siculus, and the lost writings of Arrian. Theology and ecclesiastical history are also very fully represented, but poetry and ancient philosophy are almost entirely ignored. It seems that he did not think it necessary to deal with those authors with whom every well-educated man would naturally be familiar. The literary criticisms, generally distinguished by keen and independent judgment, and the excerpts vary considerably in length. The numerous biographical notes are probably taken from the work of Hesychius of Miletus.

Some older scholarship speculated that the Bibliotheca was compiled in Baghdad at the time of Photius's embassy to the Abbasid court, since many of the mentioned works were rarely cited during the so-called Byzantine Dark Ages c. 630 – c. 800, and it was known that the Abbasids were interested in works of Greek science and philosophy. However, specialists of this period of Byzantine history, such as Paul Lemerle, have shown that Photios could not have compiled his Bibliotheca in Baghdad because he clearly states in both his introduction and his postscript that when he learned of his appointment to the embassy, he sent his brother a summary of books that he read previously, "since the time I learned how to understand and evaluate literature" i.e. since his youth. Moreover, the Abbasids were interested only in Greek science, philosophy and medicine; they did not have Greek history, rhetoric, or other literary works translated; nor did they have Christian patristic writers translated. Yet the majority of works in Bibliotheca are by Christian patristic authors, and most of the secular texts in Bibliotheca are histories, grammars or literary works, usually rhetoric, rather than science, medicine or philosophy. This further indicates that the majority of the works cannot have been read while Photios was in the Abbasid empire.

Other works
The Lexicon (Λέξεων Συναγωγή), published later than the Bibliotheca, was probably in the main the work of some of his pupils. It was intended as a book of reference to facilitate the reading of old classical and sacred authors, whose language and vocabulary were out of date. For a long time, the only manuscripts of the Lexicon were the Codex Galeanus, which passed into the library of Trinity College, Cambridge and Berolinensis graec. oct. 22, both of which were incomplete. But in 1959, Linos Politis of the University of Thessaloniki discovered a complete manuscript, codex Zavordensis 95, in the Zavorda Monastery (Greek: Ζάβορδα) in Grevena, Greece, where it still resides.

His most important theological work is the Amphilochia, a collection of some 300 questions and answers on difficult points in Scripture, addressed to Amphilochius, archbishop of Cyzicus. Other similar works are his treatise in four books against the Manichaeans and Paulicians, and his controversy with the Latins on the Procession of the Holy Spirit. Photios also addressed a long letter of theological advice to the newly converted Boris I of Bulgaria. Numerous other Epistles also survive.

Photios is also the writer of two "mirrors of princes", addressed to Boris-Michael of Bulgaria (Epistula 1, ed. Terzaghi) and to Leo VI the Wise (Admonitory Chapters of Basil I).

Photios' epitome of Philostorgius' Church History is the principal source for the work, which is now lost.

The first English translation, by Holy Transfiguration Monastery, of the "Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit" by Photios was published in 1983. Another translation was published in 1987 with a preface by Archimandrite (now Archbishop) Chrysostomos of Etna.

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title: Photios I of Constantinople


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Paul Revere

Paul Revere (December 21, 1734 O.S. (January 1, 1735 N.S.) – May 10, 1818) was an American silversmith, military officer and industrialist who played a major role during the opening months of the American Revolutionary War in Massachusetts, engaging in a midnight ride in 1775 to alert nearby minutemen of the approach of British troops prior to the battles of Lexington and Concord.

Born in the North End, Boston, Revere eventually became a prosperous and prominent Bostonian, deriving his income from silversmithing and engraving. During the American Revolution, he was a strong supporter of the Patriot cause and joined the Sons of Liberty. His midnight ride transformed him into an American folk hero, being dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1861 poem, "Paul Revere's Ride". He also helped to organize an intelligence and alarm system to keep watch on the movements of British forces. Revere later served as an officer in the Massachusetts Militia, though his service ended after the Penobscot Expedition, one of the most disastrous American campaigns of the American Revolutionary War, for which he was absolved of blame.

Following the war, Revere returned to his silversmith trade. He used the profits from his expanding business to finance his work in iron casting, bronze bell and cannon casting, and the forging of copper bolts and spikes. In 1800, he became the first American to successfully roll copper into sheets for use as sheathing on naval vessels.

Early life and education
Revere was born in the North End, Boston on December 21, 1734, according to the Old Style calendar then in use, or January 1, 1735, in the modern calendar. His father, Apollos Rivoire, a French Huguenot who came to Boston at the age of 13, had been apprenticed to the silversmith John Coney. By the time he married Deborah Hitchborn, a member of a long-standing Boston family that owned a small shipping wharf, in 1729, Rivoire had anglicized his name to Paul Revere. The Hitchborn family was of English origin; Deborah's maternal great grandparents, David and Catherine Hitchbourn, arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1641 from Boston, England. Their son, Paul Revere, was the third of 12 children and eventually the eldest surviving son. Revere grew up in the environment of the extended Hitchborn family, and never learned his father's native language.

At the age of thirteen, Paul Revere left school and became an apprentice to his father. Silversmithing afforded young Paul connections with a cross-section of Boston society; these would serve him well when he became active in the American Revolution. Further, though his father attended Puritan services, Revere was drawn to the Church of England. In 1750, aged 15, Revere was part of the first group of change ringers to ring the new bells (cast in 1744) at Christ Church, in the north of Boston (the Old North Church). Revere eventually began attending the services of the political and provocative Jonathan Mayhew at the West Church. His father did not approve, and as a result father and son came to blows on one occasion. Revere relented and returned to his father's church, although he did become friends with Mayhew, and returned to the West Church in the late 1760s.

Revere's father died in 1754, when Paul was legally too young to officially be the master of the family silver shop. In February 1756, during the French and Indian War (the North American theater of the Seven Years' War), he enlisted in the provincial army. Possibly he made this decision because of the weak economy, since army service promised consistent pay. Commissioned a second lieutenant in a provincial artillery regiment, he spent the summer at Fort William Henry at the southern end of Lake George in New York as part of an abortive plan for the capture of Fort St. Frédéric. He did not stay long in the army, but returned to Boston and assumed control of the silver shop in his own name. On August 4, 1757, he married Sarah Orne (1736–1773); their first child was born eight months later. He and Sarah had eight children, but two died young, and only one, Mary, survived her father.

1765–1774: the gathering storm of revolution
Revere's business began to suffer when the British economy entered a recession in the years following the Seven Years' War, and declined further when the Stamp Act of 1765 resulted in a further downturn in the Massachusetts economy. Business was so poor that an attempt was made to seize his property in late 1765. To help make ends meet he even took up dentistry, a skill set he was taught by a practicing surgeon who lodged at a friend's house. One client was Joseph Warren, a local physician and political opposition leader with whom Revere formed a close friendship. Revere and Warren, in addition to having common political views, were also both active in the same local Masonic lodges.

Although Revere was not one of the "Loyal Nine"—organizers of the earliest protests against the Stamp Act—he was well connected with its members, who were laborers and artisans. Revere did not participate in some of the more raucous protests, such as the attack on the home of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson. In 1765, a group of militants who would become known as the Sons of Liberty formed, of which Revere was a member. From 1765 on, in support of the dissident cause, he produced engravings and other artifacts with political themes. Among these engravings are a depiction of the arrival of British troops in 1768 (which he termed "an insolent parade") and a famous depiction of the March 1770 Boston Massacre (see illustration). Although the latter was engraved by Revere and he included the inscription, "Engraved, Printed, & Sold by Paul Revere Boston", it was modeled on a drawing by Henry Pelham, and Revere's engraving of the drawing was colored by a third man and printed by a fourth. Revere also produced a bowl commemorating the Massachusetts assembly's refusal to retract the Massachusetts Circular Letter. (This letter, adopted in response to the 1767 Townshend Acts, called for united colonial action against the acts. King George III had issued a demand for its retraction.)

In 1770 Revere purchased a house, now a museum on North Square in Boston's North End. The house provided space for his growing family while he continued to maintain his shop at nearby Clark's Wharf. Sarah died in 1773, and on October 10 of that year, Revere married Rachel Walker (1745–1813). They had eight children, three of whom died young.

In November 1773 the merchant ship Dartmouth arrived in Boston harbor carrying the first shipment of tea made under the terms of the Tea Act. This act authorized the British East India Company to ship tea (of which it had huge surpluses due to colonial boycotts organized in response to the Townshend Acts) directly to the colonies, bypassing colonial merchants. Passage of the act prompted calls for renewed protests against the tea shipments, on which Townshend duties were still levied. Revere and Warren, as members of the informal North End Caucus, organized a watch over the Dartmouth to prevent the unloading of the tea. Revere took his turns on guard duty, and was one of the ringleaders in the Boston Tea Party of December 16, when colonists dumped tea from the Dartmouth and two other ships into the harbor.

From December 1773 to November 1775, Revere served as a courier for the Boston Committee of Public Safety, traveling to New York and Philadelphia to report on the political unrest in Boston. Research has documented 18 such rides. Notice of some of them was published in Massachusetts newspapers, and British authorities received further intelligence of them from Loyalist Americans. In 1774, his cousin John on the island of Guernsey wrote to Paul that John had seen reports of Paul's role as an "express" (courier) in London newspapers.

In 1774, the military governor of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, dissolved the provincial assembly on orders from Great Britain. Governor Gage also closed the port of Boston and all over the city forced private citizens to quarter (provide lodging for) soldiers in their homes.

During this time, Revere and a group of 30 "mechanics" began meeting in secret at his favorite haunt, the Green Dragon, to coordinate the gathering and dissemination of intelligence by "watching the Movements of British Soldiers". Around this time Revere regularly contributed politically charged engravings to the recently founded Patriot monthly, Royal American Magazine.

He rode to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in December 1774 upon rumors of an impending landing of British troops there, a journey known in history as the Portsmouth Alarm. Although the rumors were false, his ride sparked a rebel success by provoking locals to raid Fort William and Mary, defended by just six soldiers, for its gunpowder supply.

War years
Because Boston was besieged after the battles of Lexington and Concord, Revere could not return to the city, which was now firmly in British hands. He boarded in Watertown, where he was eventually joined by Rachel and most of his children (Paul Jr., then 15, remained in Boston to mind the family properties). After he was denied a commission in the Continental Army, he tried to find other ways to be useful to the rebel cause. He was retained by the provincial congress as a courier, and he printed local currency which the congress used to pay the troops around Boston.

Since there was a desperate shortage of gunpowder, the provincial congress decided in November 1775 to send him to Philadelphia to study the working of the only powder mill in the colonies, in the hopes that he might be able to build a second one in Massachusetts. Revere called on the mill's owner, Oswald Eve, armed with a letter from Continental Congressmen Robert Morris and John Dickinson asking Eve to "Chearfully & from Public Spirited Motives give Mr. Revere such information as will inable him to Conduct the business on his return home." Eve showed Revere around the mill, but refused to give him detailed drawings unless he was first paid a substantial bribe. Despite this chilly reception, Revere was able to discern useful information from the visit. He also acquired, through the work of Samuel Adams, plans for another powder mill. This information enabled Revere to set up a powder mill at Stoughton (present-day Canton). The mill produced tons of gunpowder for the Patriot cause.

Revere's friend and compatriot Joseph Warren was killed in the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775. Because soldiers killed in battle were often buried in mass graves without ceremony, Warren's grave was unmarked. On March 21, 1776, several days after the British army left Boston, Revere, Warren's brothers, and a few friends went to the battlefield and found a grave containing two bodies. After being buried for nine months, Warren's face was unrecognizable, but Revere was able to identify Warren's body because he had placed a false tooth in Warren's mouth, and recognized the wire he had used for fastening it. Warren was given a proper funeral and reburied in a marked grave.

Militia service
Upon returning to Boston in 1776, Revere was commissioned a major of infantry in the Massachusetts militia in that April, and transferred to the artillery a month later. In November he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and was stationed at Castle William, defending Boston harbor. He was generally second or third in the chain of command, and on several occasions he was given command of the fort. He applied his engineering skills to maintaining the fort's armaments, even designing and building a caliper to accurately measure cannonballs and cannon bore holes. The service at Castle William was relatively isolated, and personality friction prompted some men to file complaints against Revere. The boredom was alleviated in late August 1777 when Revere was sent with a troop of soldiers to escort prisoners taken in the Battle of Bennington to Boston, where they were confined on board prison ships, and again in September when he was briefly deployed to Rhode Island.

In August 1778 Revere's regiment served in a combined Franco-American expedition whose objective was to capture the British base at Newport, Rhode Island. His regiment was responsible for erecting and maintaining artillery batteries on Aquidneck Island. The attempt was abandoned by the French when their fleet was scattered in a storm, and Revere's regiment returned to Boston before the British sortied from Newport to force the Battle of Rhode Island.

Penobscot disaster
The British in June 1779 established a new base on Penobscot Bay in present-day Maine (which was then part of Massachusetts). Massachusetts authorities called out the militia, pressed into service available shipping, and organized a major expedition to dislodge the British. The expedition was a complete fiasco: its land and naval commanders squabbled over control of the expedition, and could not agree on strategy or tactics. The arrival of British reinforcements led to the destruction of the entire Massachusetts fleet. Revere commanded the artillery units for the expedition, and was responsible for organizing the artillery train. He participated in the taking of Bank's Island, from which artillery batteries could reach the British ships anchored before Fort George. He next oversaw the transport of the guns from Bank's Island to a new position on the heights of the Bagaduce Peninsula that commanded the fort. Although Revere was in favor of storming the fort, Brigadier General Solomon Lovell opted for a siege instead. After further disagreements on how to proceed between Lovell and fleet commander Dudley Saltonstall, Lovell decided to return to the transports on August 12, a decision supported by Revere.

Late the next day British sails were spotted. A mad scramble ensued, and on the 14th the fleet was in retreat heading up the Penobscot River. Revere and his men were put ashore with their stores, and their transports destroyed. At one point Brigadier General Peleg Wadsworth ordered Revere to send his barge in an attempt to recover a ship drifting toward the enemy position. Revere at first resisted, but eventually complied, and Wadsworth told him to expect formal charges over the affair. The incident separated Revere from his men. Moving overland, he eventually managed to regroup most of his troops, and returned to Boston on August 26. A variety of charges were made against Revere, some of which were exaggerated assignments of blame made by enemies he had made in his command at Castle William. The initial hearings on the matter in September 1779 were inconclusive, but he was asked to resign his post. He repeatedly sought a full court-martial to clear his name, but it was not until February 1782 that a court martial heard the issue, exonerating him.

Business and social connections
During the Revolutionary War, Revere continued his efforts to move upwards in society into the gentry. After his failed efforts to become a military officer he attempted to become a merchant, but was hindered by a number of factors: while he was a fairly well-off member of the artisan class, he did not have the resources to afford the goods he would have sold as a merchant, nor were lenders in England willing to lend him the required startup capital. Other American merchants of the time were able to continue their business with colleagues in England. However, Revere's inexperience as a merchant meant that he had not yet established such relationships and was not able to communicate as effectively on unfamiliar matters. Another factor preventing Revere's success as a merchant was the economic climate of the time period after the war known as the Confederation Period; while the colonies had seen a time of economic growth before the war, the colonies experienced a severe post-war depression, constraining the overall success of his business.

While Revere struggled as a merchant, his success as a silversmith enabled him to pursue and leverage more advanced technological developments for the purposes of mass production. For example, rolling mills greatly improved the productivity of his silver shop and enabled his business to move further away from manufacturing high-end customized products in order to focus instead on the production of a more standardized set of goods. In the 18th century, the standard of living continuously improved in America, as genteel goods became increasingly available to the masses. Revere responded particularly well to this trend because his business was not solely manufacturing custom, high end purchases. Smaller products like teaspoons and buckles accounted for the majority of his work, allowing him to build a broad customer base.

Revere's increased efficiency left financial and human resources available for the exploration of other products, which was essential to overcoming the fluctuating post-war economic climate. In addition to increasing production, the flatting mill enabled Revere to move towards a more managerial position.

Later years: entrepreneurship, manufacturing, and politics

After the war, Revere became interested in metal work beyond gold and silver. By 1788 he had invested some of the profits from his growing silverworking trade to construct a large furnace, which would allow him to work with larger quantities of metals at higher temperatures. He soon opened an iron foundry in Boston's North End that produced utilitarian cast iron items such as stove backs, fireplace tools, and sash-window weights, marketed to a broad segment of Boston's population. Many of Revere's business practices changed when he expanded his practice into ironworking, because he transitioned from just being an artisan to also being an entrepreneur and a manager. In order to make this transition successfully, Revere had to invest substantial quantities of capital and time in his foundry.

Technological practices
The quasi-industrialization of his practice set Revere apart from his competition. "Revere's rapid foundry success resulted from fortuitous timing, innate technical aptitude, thorough research, and the casting experience he gained from silverworking." This technical proficiency allowed Revere to optimize his work and adapt to a new technological and entrepreneurial model. Revere's location also benefited his endeavors. Revere was entering the field of iron casting in a time when New England cities were becoming centers of industry. The nature of technological advancement was such that many skilled entrepreneurs in a number of fields worked together, in what is known by Nathan Rosenberg as technological convergence, by which a number of companies work together on challenges in order to spur advances. By accessing the knowledge of other nearby metal workers, Revere was able to successfully explore and master new technologies throughout his career.

Labor practices
One of the biggest changes for Revere in his new business was organization of labor. In his earlier days, Revere primarily utilized the apprenticeship model standard for artisan shops at this time, but as his business expanded he hired employees (wage laborers) to work for his foundry. Many manufacturers of the era found this transition from master to employer difficult because many employees at the onset of the Industrial Revolution identified themselves as skilled workers, and thus wanted to be treated with the respect and autonomy accorded to artisans. An artisan himself, Revere managed to avoid many of these labor conflicts by adopting a system of employment that still held trappings of the craft system in the form of worker freedoms such as work hour flexibility, wages in line with skill levels, and liquor on the job.

Manufacturing: church bells, cannon, and copper products
After mastering the iron casting process and realizing substantial profits from this new product line, Revere identified a burgeoning market for church bells in the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening that followed the war. Beginning in 1792 he became one of America's best-known bell casters, working with sons Paul Jr. and Joseph Warren Revere in the firm Paul Revere & Sons. This firm cast the first bell made in Boston and ultimately produced hundreds of bells, a number of which remain in operation.

In 1794, Revere decided to take the next step in the evolution of his business, expanding his bronze casting work by learning to cast cannon for the federal government, state governments, and private clients. Although the government often had trouble paying him on time, its large orders inspired him to deepen his contracting and seek additional product lines of interest to the military.

By 1795, a growing percentage of his foundry's business came from a new product, copper bolts, spikes, and other fittings that he sold to merchants and the Boston naval yard for ship construction. In 1801, Revere became a pioneer in the production of rolled copper, opening North America's first copper mill south of Boston in Canton. Copper from the Revere Copper Company was used to cover the original wooden dome of the Massachusetts State House in 1802. His copper and brass works eventually grew, through sale and corporate merger, into a large corporation, Revere Copper and Brass, Inc.

Steps towards standardized production
During his earlier days as an artisan, especially when working with silver products, Revere produced "bespoke" or customized goods. As he shifted to ironworking, he found the need to produce more standardized products, because this made production cheaper. To achieve the beginnings of standardization, Revere used identical molds for casting, especially in the fabrication of mass-produced items such as stoves, ovens, frames, and chimney backs. However, Revere did not totally embrace uniform production. For example, his bells and cannons were all unique products: these large objects required extensive fine-tuning and customization, and the small number of bells and cannon minimized the potential benefits of standardizing them. In addition, even the products that he made in large quantities could not be truly standardized due to technological and skill limitations. His products were rarely (if ever) identical, but his processes were well systematized. "He came to realize that the foundry oven melded the characteristics of tools and machines: it required skilled labor and could be used in a flexible manner to produce different products, but an expert could produce consistent output by following a standard set of production practices."

Freemasonry
Revere was a Freemason as a member of Lodge St. Andrews, No.81, in Boston, Massachusetts. The Lodge continues to meet in Boston with the number 4 under and the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. The date he joined the Lodge is not known but was sometime after the inauguration of the Lodge on St Andrew's Day, November 30, 1756, and before May 15, 1769, when he is recorded in the Grand Lodge of Scotland membership register as the Lodge Secretary. Joseph Warren and William Palfrey are also recorded, on the same page, as members of the Lodge as being Master and Senior Warden respectively. (see image)

He subsequently became the Grand Master of the Freemasons of Massachusetts from 1795 to 1797. During his tenure, Revere, along with Governor Samuel Adams and Deputy Grand Master, Colonel William Scollay, deposited a box containing an assemblage of commemorative items under the cornerstone of the Massachusetts State House on July 4, 1795.

Politics and final years
Revere remained politically active throughout his life. His business plans in the late 1780s were often stymied by a shortage of adequate money in circulation. Alexander Hamilton's national policies regarding banks and industrialization exactly matched his dreams, and he became an ardent Federalist committed to building a robust economy and a powerful nation. Of particular interest to Revere was the question of protective tariffs; he and his son sent a petition to Congress in 1808 asking for protection for his sheet copper business. He continued to participate in local discussions of political issues even after his retirement in 1811, and in 1814 circulated a petition offering the government the services of Boston's artisans in protecting Boston during the War of 1812. Revere died on May 10, 1818, at the age of 83, at his home on Charter Street in Boston. He is buried in the Granary Burying Ground on Tremont Street.

Legacy
After Revere's death, the family business was taken over by his oldest surviving son, Joseph Warren Revere. The copper works founded in 1801 continues today as the Revere Copper Company, with manufacturing divisions in Rome, New York, and New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Revere's original silverware, engravings, and other works are highly regarded today, and can be found on display in museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Revere Bell, presented in 1843 to the Church of St. Andrew in Singapore by his daughter, Mrs. Maria Revere Balestier, wife of American consul Joseph Balestier, is now displayed in the National Museum of Singapore. This is the only bell cast by the Revere foundry that is outside the United States. For a time, it was displayed behind velvet ropes in the foyer of the United States Embassy in Singapore.

The communities of Revere, Massachusetts, and Revere, Minnesota, bear his name, as do Revere Beach in Revere, Massachusetts; Revere Avenue in The Bronx, New York City; Paul Revere Road in Arlington, Massachusetts; and Paul Revere Apartments in Seattle.

A 25-cent 1958 U.S. postage stamp in the Liberty Series honors Paul Revere, featuring the portrait by Gilbert Stuart. He also appears on the $5,000 Series EE U.S. Savings Bond. Ryan Reynolds released a Mint Mobile commercial that features Avery Revere, a direct descent of Paul Revere.

Paul Revere Mall is a corridor located in Boston's North End behind Old North Church. It features the Equestrian statue of Paul Revere by Cyrus Edwin Dallin.

In popular culture
In episode 8 of the 2nd season of the US TV show The West Wing (1999–2006), Paul Revere is named as the manufacturer of president Bartlet's knife-set he presents to Charlie, his personal aide.

Revere appears in the 2012 video game Assassin's Creed III and is portrayed by Bruce Dinsmore. He is fictitiously depicted riding alongside the game's protagonist, Ratonhnaké:ton, to alert the colonial militias.

Sylvester Stallone voiced Revere in the animated series Liberty's Kids.

Michael Raymond-James portrayed Revere on the 2015 History miniseries Sons of Liberty.

Descendants

 * Joseph Warren Revere, son
 * Maria Revere Balestier, daughter
 * Joseph Warren Revere, grandson; artist, Navy officer, and Union Army general
 * Paul Revere, great-grandson; Morristown lawyer
 * Paul Revere Jr. (3rd great-grandson)
 * Paul Revere III (4th great-grandson)
 * Pauline Revere Thayer, daughter of Paul Revere III
 * Avery Revere (4th great-granddaughter)

title: Paul Revere


text:
Type B Cipher Machine

In the history of cryptography, the "System 97 Typewriter for European Characters" (九七式欧文印字機 kyūnana-shiki ōbun injiki) or "Type B Cipher Machine", codenamed Purple by the United States, was an encryption machine used by the Japanese Foreign Office from February 1939 to the end of World War II. The machine was an electromechanical device that used stepping-switches to encrypt the most sensitive diplomatic traffic. All messages were written in the 26-letter English alphabet, which was commonly used for telegraphy. Any Japanese text had to be transliterated or coded. The 26-letters were separated using a plug board into two groups, of six and twenty letters respectively. The letters in the sixes group were scrambled using a 6 × 25 substitution table, while letters in the twenties group were more thoroughly scrambled using three successive 20 × 25 substitution tables.

The cipher codenamed "Purple" replaced the Type A Red machine previously used by the Japanese Foreign Office. The sixes and twenties division was familiar to U.S. Army Signals Intelligence Service (SIS) cryptographers from their work on the Type A cipher and it allowed them to make early progress on the sixes portion of messages. The twenties cipher proved much more difficult, but a breakthrough in September 1940 allowed the Army cryptographers to construct a machine that duplicated the behavior (was an analog) of the Japanese machines, even though no one in the U.S. had any description of one.

The Japanese also used stepping-switches in systems, codenamed Coral and Jade, that did not divide their alphabets. American forces referred to information gained from decryptions as Magic.

Development of Japanese cipher machines
The Imperial Japanese Navy did not fully cooperate with the Army in pre-war cipher machine development, and that lack of cooperation continued into World War II. The Navy believed the Purple machine was sufficiently difficult to break that it did not attempt to revise it to improve security. This seems to have been on the advice of a mathematician, Teiji Takagi, who lacked a background in cryptanalysis. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was supplied Red and Purple by the Navy. No one in Japanese authority noticed the weak points in both machines.

Prototype of Red
Japanese diplomatic communications at negotiations for the Washington Naval Treaty were broken by the American Black Chamber in 1922, and when this became publicly known, there was considerable pressure to improve their security. In any case, the Japanese Navy had planned to develop their first cipher machine for the following London Naval Treaty. Japanese Navy Captain Risaburo Ito, of Section 10 (cipher & code) of the Japanese Navy General Staff Office, supervised the work.

The development of the machine was the responsibility of the Japanese Navy Institute of Technology, Electric Research Department, Section 6. In 1928, the chief designer Kazuo Tanabe and Navy Commander Genichiro Kakimoto developed a prototype of Red, "Roman-typewriter cipher machine".

The prototype used the same principle as the Kryha cipher machine, having a plug-board, and was used by the Japanese Navy and Ministry of Foreign Affairs at negotiations for the London Naval Treaty in 1930.

Red
The prototype machine was finally completed as "Type 91 Typewriter" in 1931. The year 1931 was year 2591 in the Japanese Imperial calendar. Thus it was prefixed "91-shiki" from the year it was developed.

The 91-shiki injiki Roman-letter model was also used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as "Type A Cipher Machine", codenamed "Red" by United States cryptanalysts.

The Red machine was unreliable unless the contacts in its half-rotor switch were cleaned every day. It enciphered vowels (AEIOUY) and consonants separately, perhaps to reduce telegram costs, and this was a significant weak point. The Navy also used the 91-shiki injiki Kana-letter model at its bases and on its vessels.

Purple

In 1937, the Japanese completed the next generation "Type 97 Typewriter". The Ministry of Foreign Affairs machine was the "Type B Cipher Machine", codenamed Purple by United States cryptanalysts.

The chief designer of Purple was Kazuo Tanabe. His engineers were Masaji Yamamoto and Eikichi Suzuki. Eikichi Suzuki suggested the use of a stepping switch instead of the more troublesome half-rotor switch.

Clearly, the Purple machine was more secure than Red, but the Navy did not recognize that Red had already been broken. The Purple machine inherited a weakness from the Red machine that six letters of the alphabet were encrypted separately. It differed from Red in that the group of letters was changed and announced every nine days, whereas in Red they were permanently fixed as the Latin vowels AEIOUY. Thus US Army SIS was able to break the cipher used for the six letters before it was able to break the one used for the 20 others.

Design
The Type B Cipher Machine consisted of several components. As reconstructed by the US Army, there were electric typewriters at either end, similar to those used with the Type A Machine. The Type B was organized for encryption as follows:

 * An input typewriter
 * An input plugboard that permutes the letters from the typewriter keyboard and separates them into a group of 6 letters and a group of 20 letters
 * A stepping switch with 6 layers wired to select one out of 25 permutations of the letters in the sixes group
 * Three stages of stepping switches (I, II, and III), connected in series. Each stage is effectively a 20 layer switch with 25 outputs on each layer. Each stage selects one out of 25 permutations of the letters in the twenties group.  The Japanese used three 7-layer stepping switches geared together to build each stage (see photos). The U.S. SIS used four 6-layer switches per stage in their first analog machine.
 * An output plug board that reverses the input permutation and sends the letters to the output typewriter for printing
 * The output typewriter

For decryption, the data flow is reversed. The keyboard on the second typewriter becomes the input and the twenties letters pass through the stepping switch stages in the opposite order.

Stepping switches
A stepping switch is a multi-layer mechanical device that was commonly used at the time in telephone switching systems. Each layer has a set of electrical connects, 25 in the Type B, arranged in a semicircular arc. These do not move and are called the stator. A wiper arm on a rotor at the focus of the semicircle connects with one stator contact at a time. The rotors on each layer are attached to a single shaft that advances from one stator contact to the next whenever an electromagnet connected to a ratchet is pulsed. There are actually two wiper arms on each level, connected together, so that when one wiper advances past the last contact in the semicircle, the other engages the first contact. This allows the rotor connections to keep cycling through all 25 stator contacts as the electromagnet is pulsed.

To encrypt the twenties letters, a 20-layer stepping switch was needed in each of the three stages. Both the Japanese version and the early American analog constructed each stage from several smaller stepping switches of the type used in telephone central offices. The American analog used four 6-level switches to create one 20-layer switch. The four switches in each stage were wired to step synchronously. The fragment of a Type 97 Japanese machine on display at the National Cryptologic Museum, the largest piece known in existence, has three 7-layer stepping switches (see photo). The U.S. Army developed an improved analog in 1944 that has all the layers needed for each stage on a single shaft. An additional layer was used in the improved analog to automatically set each switch bank to the initial position specified in the key.

However implemented, the 20-layer stepping switch in each stage had 20 rotor connections and 500 stator connections, one wiper and 25 stator contacts on each layer. Each stage must have exactly 20 connections on each end to connect with the adjacent stage or plugboard. On the rotor side, that is not a problem as there are 20 rotors. On the stator end of a stage, every column of stator contacts corresponding to the same rotor position on each of the 20 layers is connected to the 20 output wires (leads in the diagram) in a scrambled order, creating a permutation of the 20 inputs. This is done differently for each of the rotor positions. Thus each stator output wire has 25 connections, one from each rotor position, though from different levels. The connections needed to do this created a "rats nest" of wires in the early U.S. analog. The improved analog organized the wiring more neatly with three matrices of soldering terminals visible above each stepping switch in the photograph.

Stepping order
The stages were bi-directional. Signals went through each stage in one direction for encryption and in the other direction for decryption. Unlike the system in the German Enigma machine, the order of the stages was fixed and there was no reflector. However the stepping arrangement could be changed.

The sixes switches stepped one position for each character encrypted or decrypted. The motions of the switches in the twenties stages were more complex. The three stages were assigned to step fast, medium or slow. There were six possible ways to make this assignment and the choice was determined by a number included at the beginning of each message called the message indicator. The U.S. improved analog has a six-position switch for making this assignment, see photo. The message indicator also specified the initial positions of the twenties switches. The indicator was different for each message or part of a message, when multi-part messages were sent. The final part of the key, the alphabet plugboard arrangement, was changed daily.

The twenties switch stepping was controlled in part by the sixes switch. Exactly one of the three switches stepped for each character. The fast switch stepped for each character except when the sixes switch was in its 25th position. Then the medium switch stepped, unless it too was in its 25th position, in which case the slow switch stepped.

Weaknesses and cryptanalysis
The SIS learned in 1938 of the forthcoming introduction of a new diplomatic cipher from decoded messages. Type B messages began to appear in February 1939. The Type B had several weaknesses, some in its design, others in the way it was used. Frequency analysis could often make 6 of the 26 letters in the ciphertext alphabet letters stand out from the other 20 letters, which were more uniformly distributed. This suggested the Type B used a similar division of plaintext letters as used in the Type A. The weaker encryption used for the "sixes" was easier to analyze. The sixes cipher turned out to be polyalphabetic with 25 fixed permuted alphabets, each used in succession. The only difference between messages with different indicators was the starting position in the list of alphabets. The SIS team recovered the 25 permutations by 10 April 1939. The frequency analysis was complicated by the presence of romanized Japanese text and the introduction in early May of a Japanese version of the Phillips Code.

Knowing the plaintext of 6 out of 26 letters scattered throughout the message sometimes enabled parts of the rest of the message to be guessed, especially when the writing was highly stylized. Some diplomatic messages included the text of letters from the U.S. government to the Japanese government. The English text of such messages could usually be obtained. Some diplomatic stations did not have the Type B, especially early in its introduction, and sometimes the same message was sent in Type B and in the Type A Red cipher, which the SIS had broken. All these provided cribs for attacking the twenties cipher.

William F. Friedman was assigned to lead the group of cryptographers attacking the B system in August 1939. Even with the cribs, progress was difficult. The permutations used in the twenties cipher were "brilliantly" chosen, according to Friedman, and it became clear that periodicities would be unlikely to be discovered by waiting for enough traffic encrypted on a single indicator, since the plugboard alphabets changed daily. The cryptographers developed a way to transform messages sent on different days with the same indicator into homologous messages that would appear to have been sent on the same day. This provided enough traffic based on the identical settings (6 messages with indicator 59173) to have a chance of finding some periodicity that would reveal the inner workings of the twenties cipher.

On 20 September 1940 at about 2 pm Genevieve Grotjan, carrying a set of work sheets walked up to a group of men engrossed in conversation and politely attempted to get Frank Rowlett's attention. She had found evidence of cycles in the twenties cipher. Celebration ensued at this first break in the 20s cipher and it soon enabled a replica machine to be built. A pair of other messages using indicator 59173 were decrypted by 27 September, coincidentally the date that the Tripartite Agreement between Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan was announced. There was still a lot of work to do to recover the meaning of the other 119 possible indicators. As of October 1940, one third of the indicator settings had been recovered. From time to time the Japanese instituted new operating procedures to strengthen the Type B system, but these were often described in messages to diplomatic outputs in the older system, giving the Americans warning.

Reconstruction of the Purple machine was based on ideas of Larry Clark. Advances into the understanding of Purple keying procedures were made by Navy Lieutenant Francis Raven. After the initial break, Raven discovered that the Japanese had divided the month into three 10-day periods, and, within each period, they used the keys of the first day, with small, predictable changes.

The Japanese believed Type B to be unbreakable throughout the war, and even for some time after the war, even though they had been informed otherwise by the Germans. In April 1941, Hans Thomsen, a diplomat at the German embassy in Washington, D.C., sent a message to Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, informing him that "an absolutely reliable source" had told Thomsen that the Americans had broken the Japanese diplomatic cipher (that is, Purple). That source apparently was Konstantin Umansky, the Soviet ambassador to the US, who had deduced the leak based upon communications from U.S. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles. The message was duly forwarded to the Japanese; but use of the code continued.

American analogs
The SIS built its first machine that could decrypt Purple messages in late 1940. A second Purple analog was built by the SIS for the US Navy. A third was sent to England in January 1941 on HMS King George V (41), which had brought Ambassador Halifax to the U.S. That Purple analog was accompanied by a team of four American cryptologists, two Army, two Navy, who received information on British successes against German ciphers in exchange. This machine was subsequently sent to Singapore, and after Japanese moves south through Malaya, on to India. A fourth Purple analog was sent to the Philippines and a fifth was kept by the SIS. A sixth, originally intended for Hawaii, was sent to England for use there. The Purple intercepts proved important in the European theater due to the detailed reports on German plans sent in that cipher by the Japanese ambassador in Berlin.

Fragmentary recovery of Japanese machines
The United States obtained portions of a Purple machine from the Japanese Embassy in Germany following Germany's defeat in 1945 (see image above) and discovered that the Japanese had used a stepping switch almost identical in its construction to the one Leo Rosen of SIS had chosen when building a duplicate (or Purple analog machine) in Washington in 1939 and 1940. The stepping switch was a uniselector; a standard component used in large quantities in automatic telephone exchanges in countries like America, Britain, Canada, Germany and Japan, with extensive dial-telephone systems. The U.S. used four 6-level switches in each stage of its Purple analogs, the Japanese used three 7-level switches. Both represented the 20s cipher identically. Note however that these were not two-motion or Strowger switches as sometimes claimed: "twenty-five Strolger-type (sic) stepper switches ...".

Apparently, all other Purple machines at Japanese embassies and consulates around the world (e.g. in Axis countries, Washington, London, Moscow, and in neutral countries) and in Japan itself, were destroyed and ground into small particles by the Japanese. American occupation troops in Japan in 1945–52 searched for any remaining units. A complete Jade cipher machine, built on similar principles but without the sixes and twenties separation, was captured and is on display at NSA's National Cryptologic Museum.

Impact of Allied decryption
The Purple machine itself was first used by Japan in June 1938, but American and British cryptanalysts had broken some of its messages well before the attack on Pearl Harbor. US cryptanalysts decrypted and translated Japan's 14-part message to its Washington embassy to break off negotiations with the United States at 1 p.m., Washington time, on 7 December 1941, before the Japanese Embassy in Washington had done so. Decryption and typing difficulties at the embassy, coupled with ignorance of the importance of it being on time, were major reasons for the "Nomura Note" to be delivered late.

During World War II, the Japanese ambassador to Nazi Germany, General Hiroshi Oshima, was well-informed on German military affairs. His reports went to Tokyo in Purple-enciphered radio messages. One had a comment that Hitler told him on 3 June 1941 that "in every probability war with Russia cannot be avoided." In July and August 1942, he toured the Eastern Front, and in 1944, he toured the Atlantic Wall fortifications against invasion along the coasts of France and Belgium. On 4 September, Hitler told him that Germany would strike in the West, probably in November.

Since those messages were being read by the Allies, they provided valuable intelligence about German military preparations against the forthcoming invasion of Western Europe. He was described by General George Marshall as "our main basis of information regarding Hitler's intentions in Europe."

The decrypted Purple traffic and Japanese messages generally were the subject of acrimonious hearings in Congress after World War II in connection with an attempt to decide who, if anyone, had allowed the attack at Pearl Harbor to happen and so should be blamed. It was during those hearings that the Japanese for the first time learned that the Purple cipher machine had indeed been broken. (See the Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory article for additional detail on the controversy and the investigations.)

The Soviets also succeeded in breaking the Purple system in late 1941, and together with reports from Richard Sorge, learned that Japan was not going to attack the Soviet Union. Instead, its targets were southward, toward Southeast Asia and American and British interests there. That allowed Stalin to move considerable forces from the Far East to Moscow in time to help stop the German push to Moscow in December.

title: Type B Cipher Machine