The US Bombes, NCR, Joseph Desch, and 600 WAVES: the first reunion of the US Naval Computing Machine Laboratory

Author

Lee, John A N ; Burke, Colin ; Anderson, Deborah

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., Virginia Polytech. Inst. & State Univ., Blacksburg, VA, USA

Volume

22

Issue

3

fYear

2000

Firstpage

27

Lastpage

41

Abstract

The code-breaking activities of the British Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park have dominated our understanding of the secret war to infiltrate the message system of the German forces in Europe between 1939 and 1945. This is the story of the US Navy´s response to the need to gain intelligence to win the battle of the Atlantic in 1941 and 1942, the competitive development of mechanical code-breaking systems known as Bombes, and the contributions of NCR engineer Joseph Desch and 600 Navy WAVES (Women Appointed for Volunteer Emergency Service)

Keywords

cryptography; history; military communication; military computing; Atlantic Ocean; Bletchley Park; British Government Code and Cipher School; Enigma machine; German forces; Joseph Desch; NCR; US Bombes; US Naval Computing Machine Laboratory; US Navy; WAVES; Women Appointed for Volunteer Emergency Service; World War II; code-breaking activities; competitive development; mechanical code-breaking systems; message system infiltration; military intelligence; secret war; Circuits; Commutation; Cryptography; Displays; Encoding; Government; Keyboards; Laboratories; Military computing; Weapons;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Annals of the History of Computing, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1058-6180

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/85.859524

Filename

859524