Sometimes referred to as the "Italian Enigma," the OMI Nistri was a 5 rotor cipher machine produced and sold by the Italian firm Ottico Meccanica Italiana (OMI) in Rome in the 1939 to 1940 time frame. Ottica Meccanica Italiana (OMI) was an Italian company producing photogrammetric instruments and was founded in Rome in 1926 by Umberto Nistri (1895 - 1962) . From 1962 onwards, Raffaello Nistri (1920-1981), son of Umberto, was president of the company. Since the 1980s the company has been part of a part of the Agusta group.

Can anyone provide any further information? Contact: jerry.proc@sympatico.ca

Exterior view. The printwheel has two parallel sets of the same alphabet and the printed output / paper-tape passes over a circular blade. This results in two wo copies of each message.

With cover off. Note that there is no letter 'W' in the Italian language. The 'W' key is therefore used as a space character. The CX-52 (which was sold all over the world) can be adjusted to use A, J, K, W, X or Z for spacing. Presumably, any given CX-52 customer would choose the least-used one of those letters based on their native language.