Device used in Nazi coding machine found for sale on eBay

Rare Lorenz teleprinter, part of Hitler's encryption equipment, snapped up by National Museum of Computing

For codebreakers with the allied forces, it was more important a discovery than the Enigma machine, offering encryption for the Nazi command that, when cracked, would hasten the end of the second world war and lead to huge breakthroughs in modern computing.

Less than 80 years later, for a thrifty woman in Essex, the "telegram machine" was little more than a dusty old gadget languishing in the garden shed.