Wasn’t All Magic: The Early Struggle to Automate Cryptanalysis

The National Security Agency has declassified an eye-opening pre-history of computers used for code-breaking between the 1930s and 1960s.  Special thanks and courtesy of GovernmentAttic.org  for allowing The Black Vault to post it here as well.

Excerpt

INTRODUCTION: I am one of those “outsiders” I talk about so much in the later chapters of this book. I was fortunate to be brought into the National Security Agency as one of the Center for Cryptologic History’s first Scholars in Residence. I was borrowed from my university because I had spent a decade working on the history of computers at NSA’s predecessors. I even had the courage to write a book about the subject. 

That monograph was on the machines, policies, and relationships that led to the U.S. Navy’s cryptanalytic machine (computer) program in World War II. The book was also about the first major attempts to automate the American library. It had to be about both because the same people built bibliographic and cryptanalytic machines.

Continue scrolling for more...

My study covered events in the history of the machines through the 1940s, but its focus was on the period between 1930 and 1945. An important conclusion was that the relationship between the efforts of America’s codebreakers and the emergence of the modern digital electronic computer was more complex than had been thought. The navy’s cryptanalysts were in a push-me, pull-me situation. Their work made mechanization a necessity, but the pressures of war and the refusal of the government bureaucracy to sponsor long term research and development programs prevented the navy from becoming the inventor of the modern computer.

During World War II American cryptanalysts built some of the most sophisticated electronic machines in the world, but the need to address cryptanalytic crises blocked them from creating the general-purpose digital electronic computer.

Just as my book was published, I was asked to come to the National Security Agency. One purpose of my year in residence was to see if it was possible to write a complete history of computers at the Agency. The goal was a monograph that covered the entire life of NSA and its predecessors. The thought of finally being able to see the many highly classified documents that had been withheld from me more than balanced the pledge I had to give: I had to promise to refrain from publishing without the approval of NSA’s censors.

 

Download the Document

Wasn’t All Magic: The Early Struggle to Automate Cryptanalysis [ 362 Pages, 49MB ]

 

 

Follow The Black Vault on Social Media:

This post was published on February 24, 2015 5:27 am

John Greenewald

Recent Posts

The DoD Inspector General’s Evaluation of the DoD’s Actions Regarding Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

This article was originally written in August 2024. However, additional document releases related to these…

July 15, 2025

Do Not Respond: Pentagon Staff Instructed to Ignore The Black Vault’s UAP Inquiry

The Department of Defense (DoD) has released 151 pages of internal records related to the…

July 15, 2025

U.S. Government Confirms Multiple Drone Incursions Over Pantex Nuclear Facility; Newly Released Documents Reveal Previously Unreported Security Events

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released a series of previously undisclosed documents confirming…

July 12, 2025

Air Force Confirms Drone Swarms Over Wright-Patterson AFB Led to Airspace Shutdown; Videos and Reports Released

Newly released Air Force records confirm that Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) in Ohio experienced…

July 11, 2025

Navy Withheld Nearly 500 Pages About UAP Video Release Decision, Records Show FOIA Pressure Drove Disclosure

Newly released documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal that the U.S.…

July 9, 2025

CIA Mishandles UFO Files Again: Intelligence on Soviet UFO Reports Lost Forever

The CIA’s history of losing or mismanaging UFO-related records continues with yet another example, this…

July 7, 2025