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MACHINES IN THE SERVICE OF CRYPTANALYSIS 

Presented 28 September 1954 

to 

Director, NSA, and his Staff 

by 

The Machine Division, NSA-82 
Every one of _us, I am sure, will agree that the greatest asset 

of this Agency is the skilled and experienced personnel which it 

proudly claims. The Machine Division is in a unique position to 

realize the magnitude of another great asset -- the electrical 

analytic machines which it operates for the Agency. By the most 

simple comparisons, this Agency is a giant in the use of machines. 

The electric power consumed by our analytic machines would supply 

about 1600 average homes; the 100,000 vacuum tubes which make our 

machines work are the rough equivalent of 5,000 TV sets; this year's 

budget for rental of about 320 machines from the IBM Corp will be 

$2 million; we will continue to receive new equipment to be owned 

outright by the Agency which will lift our long range expenditure 

for research, design and procurement of over 400 analytic machines 

to approximately $75 million. 

These are big figures. But because of them, this Agency is 

equipped to do, and is doing a big job. 

NSA 82, the Machine· Division within Production, is proud to 

present the story of what these machines are and how they are used. 

We acknowledge that the leadership, stimulation and assistance of 

many organizations have made our present machine position possible. 

You analysts and statisticians in the operating organizations discovered and defined the needs which these machines fill. You 

engineers and mathematicians in Research and Development helped to 

design our machines and describe their use. Yo~ members of staff 

entities have assisted in the procurement of these expensive tools, 

and the manpower, the electric pcwer, and the air conditioning 

required to keep them in operation. 

This morning we are going to talk about the machines we have 

and some of the uses we make of them. Our mission is to support 

the analytic effort of this Agency. In order to explain how we do 

this we will occasionally have to trespass into the territory of 

cryptanalysis. The details and ramifications of our machines and 

the jobs we do are numerous and complex. Therefore I shall oversimplify, and I ask the indulgence of those of you whose intimate 

knowledge of detail is far greater than will be revealed here. 

I will present facts about the speeds of machines, and will 

compare them to the speed of hand processes. I admit that I will 

not tell the whole story, for behind the performance Qf any machine 

there are numbers of people whose work is essential, but does not 

appear in a description of the functions of the machine. There are 

over 150 engineers and technicians who keep the ~quipment in running 

order, and seek to improve it by modifications. 
REF lJ?)..: A66701 

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There are 200 card and tape punchers who prepare your data to 

be fed into machines. Without these vital functions your jobs 

would not get started, and the machines would not run. The 

contribution of these silent partners is more obscure than that 

of the operators who actually run the ma.chines, and of the methods 

people and programmers who in effect tell the machines how to do 

your jobs. Altogether, I am speaking of a division of 800 people. 

engaged in putting some mighty exacting jobs on some quite complex 

equipment. 

We will first examine IBM equipment which forms the historical 

root of machine usage in this Agency. We will discuss in turn the 

classes of machines peculiar to this Agency -- the comparators, 

the recognition devices, and some special purpose equipments. We 

will examine the most modern class, the computers, and conclude 

with some remarks about the machines of the future. 

Very few of us know as a matter pf personal experience that 

in 1932 the Navy Security Group began using standard IBM accounting 

machines. Two years later the AITIJY obtained similar machines to 

assist in the arduous task of preparing code books. · 

The use of ma.chines toward·communications intelligence goals 

quickly became the major emphasis. Here also a great gain was 

realized since copying and sorting the raw material of cryptograms 

was just as onerous a duty in 1934 as in 1954, and the people who 

had to do it were mighty few in number. The COM INT use of standard 

IBM by both organizations grew from 8 machines in 1934 to over ?50 

in WW II. At the close of the war the number of IBM units dropped 

to about its present level of 314, ,which is probably the strength 

at which this equipment will continue. When we notice that the 

speed of machines has increased since wartime days, and that great 

improvements have been made in the usefulness of some of them, we 

may not be as cUrtailed as the figures would indicate. This 20 

year long use of IBM in such quantities is a high tribute to the 

usefulness and versatility of this equipment. The decodes, the 

organized data, the tools .which help analysts with their problems 

flow out each day in a ribbon of paper which -- if you can bear 

the comparison -- would reach from Arlington Hall Station along 

Arlington Bou~evard.to Memorial Bridge. 

The factors which explain and guarantee the continued use of 

this equipment are its 'reliability, its availability, and the 

versat~lity of a system whose functions are the simple ones: 
REF I-JD-: A66701 

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to record information 

to hold it· 

to sort and rearrange it 

to combine it 

to summarize it 

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and to list it in usable form. 

And while doing all this a respectable saving of labor over hand 

methods is achieved. 

As an example of one kind.of application of standard IBM, let 

us consider the problem of encoded messages. Many nations rel.7 

upon code books to protect their communications. Such systems are 

as insecure as any substitution system provided there is enough 

traffic available to an organization which has the skill and the 

will to read them. NSA has read hundreds of codes. Standard IBM 

has been the machine tool most used in the job. The contribution 

of IBM is in accumulating, arranging and swmnarizing the information 

about all the code groups which have occurred, and presenting it 

in usable form. The'disciplined imagination of code breakers does 

the rest as they examine the frequently repeated groups and the 

patterns which they make, and arrive at the meaning of each group 

in the code book. The eventual product, through many successive 

additions to the material for study, is a daily decode, which also 

may be made by IBM, and which requires only translation to make it 

an intelligence, product. 

Unfortunately th·e cryptographers of many nations are aware 

that their codes can be compromised thru volume use, and some have 

taken steps to prevent it. Since the repetition of code groups 

and phrases is the thing that lets us into a code, all they need 

to do is suppress those repetitions. One way in which this is done 

is by apply~ng to each message a key, which is simply a strip of 

numbers to be combined 'With the stream of code groups. The code 

group for PERIOD which might appear 3 times in a message and thus 

give itself away will now appear as 3 different cipher groups because 3 different key groups fell above it as the message was enciphered. · · 

If a fresh stream of key is used for each message, and if the 

key has no discernable characteristics, we would never get a look 

at the code itself, and would never read the system. Very o~en, 

however, only a limited amount of key is supplied, and it gets used 

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REF :E-Ei)-: A66701 . .:. .-... : .. ~- ... 

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over and over again, by design or by accident. The messages 

enciphered by the same key are said to be 11 in depth". If we 

can line the messages up properly with respect to the key used 

to encipher them, we may be able to remove the key and read the 

messages. Repetitions in the cipher text suggest the way in which 

the messages should be lined up. Although we do not yet know the 

key used above each column of cipher groups, we do know that it 

was the same key, and we will later discuss methods by which the 

key may be recovered. 

At this point I'd like to consider the earlier problem -- how did we get the messages lined up properly in the first place? 

There are many methods; some involve analytic machines, some do 

not. When the easier hand or machine methods have failed ·either 

to find depth or to establish the unfortunate fact that it is not 

present, there is usually only one technique feasible. That is 

to use the machines called comparators. They attack the problem 

of depth finding by comparing every pair of messages at every 

possible aligrunent and counting the coincidences between them. 

For aligrunents which have a.high level of coincidence of'cipher 

groups or individual characters there is a possibility of depth. 

For aligrunents which have a low level of coincidence there is 

little likelihood of depth. An easy case to consider is that of 

two messages enciphered by a long strip of alphabetic key.· When 

the messages are lined up in correct relation to each other, the 

number of coincidences should be as' in plain text, about 7%. 

When they are incorrectly aligned the· coincidence should fall to 

4%. 

1. 

2. 

3. 

4. 

5. 

By hand, the·process would be managed as follows: 

Write each message out on a long strip·or paper. 

Place the head of the ~econd message under the tail of the first 

message and count how many letters of one are over identical 

letters of the other. . . Slide the second to the.le~ one letter, and repeat the counting 

operation. 

Repeat the sliding and the counting operation until the tail or 

the second message slides off the head of the first message. 

Examine the record of counts for those which appear significant. 

Now, how much work is involved in comparing two 200 letter 

messages? It is surprising to find that there will be almost 40,000 

letter pair comparisons ma.de. How long will this take? Well, if 

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REF :J:J)-: A66701 

a person took one second to make each letter pair comparison, this 

would take him about 10 hours. · 

Now, what happens if-a Jrd, a 4th and so on message belongs to 

the set and must likewise be compared each with every other? A 

three message set requires J comparisons, or 30 hours. A 4th message 

requires 6 comparisons, or 60 hours. Roughly, the time goes up almost 

as fast as the square of the number of messages. Unfortunately this 

is the real condition in cryptanalysis - the number of messages to 

be examined is large, and the prospects of immediate success.are slim. 

Still, the job has to be done. 

Many years of designing, building and using ma.chines of the 

comparator type led to a present comparator called the ROBIN, whose 

function is exactly that or the above problem -- to compare 2 streams 

of characters and count the coincidences between them. ROBIN handles 

its messages on punched paper tape, it looks at the characters with 

photoelectric cells.instead of eyes, it performs its counting in 

electronic counters instead of by tallying. But the important thing 

is that it does all this at 'the rate of 50,000 comparisons per second. 

Thus if we compare one ROBIN machine with people, we would seem justified in saying that it is the equivalent of the work of 50,000 cipher 

clerks armed with nothing more formidable than strips of paper and a 

pencil. The ratio is so astoundingly in favor or the machine, 50,000 

to 1, that we have entered upon a new and revolutionary era. Such 

machines do not save labor, they create it.. Let me illustrate: 

Eleven ROBIN machines were used 16 hours a day for a period of 10 

months on just one problem. ··To do the job in the same length of 

time by hand would have required something like 1 million people. 

It is not likely that we would have emplhoyed so. many people for one 

phase of one problem. We simply would not have done it, and might 

have gone for years in ignorance of whether or not the phenomenon 

we searched for occurred in the particular.traffic. 

ROBIN is but one in a family of comparators. Other members of 

the family have contributed much to its development and each has 

been peculiarly useful in its own way. 

The 70 :MM comparator was the first tape comparator. It was 

designed and built during the late JO's by Dr. Vannevar Bush of MIT, 

and put into service in 1942. It could compare about 85 characters 

per second. 

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The COPPERHEAD comparator was de~igned to search for two group 

hits in the cipher of enciphered code systems. Put into use in 1944, 

it became obsolete when its functions were taken over by the 701 

computer. 

The GOLDBERG comparator was a general purpose comparator of 

rather large scale. It was one of the first Agency ma.chines to use 

a magnetic drum to store and handle data internally. 

The above 3 machines are obsolete. 

CONNIE I is a comparator which has been extremely useful in 

examination of teletype scrambler systems. The scanning speed of 

CONNIE I is 5,000 characters per second. CONNIE I was put into use 

in 1949. A new device on CONNIE I was the high speed printe~ developed for this Agency, capable of print~ng 7 lines per second. It had 

to be this fast because sometimes answers come that fast. 

CONNIE II is a newer version of high speed comparator which will 

have greater flexibility than CONNIE I. It is now being installed in 

B building, and will replace CONNIE I. 

A comparator known as.VIVIAN is used exclusively for analysis 

of ma.chine cipher. It is different from other comparators in that 

its comparison takes place in what is called a mercury delay line. 

This is a cylinder about the size of a large drinking glass filled 

with mercury. Information is stored in the mercury in the form. of 

.sound waves traveling through the cylinder at the rate of a million 

pulses per. second. The first model of the machine was built in 1951. 

The use of-the ROBIN machine dates from 1950. 

DELLA, ·a 'comparator of new type, is now being assembled at NSS • 

. It will perf0Dm comparing operations similar to those of ROBIN but 

at a rate of 5 million comparisons per second instead of a mere 50,000. 

Such high speeds are possible because the paper tape has been replaced 

by D'Bgnetic tape, and because of other circuit improvements. Such 

high speeds are necessary because a growing backlog of work exists 

which can be done only by DELLA. The work on hand at present can 

keep DELLA occupied for more than 6 months. 

Do our pet names for t~ese machines worry you? They are very 

convenient to us as short identifications of a specific machine. , Here's an idea of how they come about. Once upon a time a rather 

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REF l-:ID·: A66701 

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large cryptanalytic effort was named the PRINCESS project. A 

machine ·to perform a major part of it was christened DUCHESS. 

But since DUCHESS would take at least 3 years to build, a machine 

called COUNTESS was conceived to do pa.rt of the job.. More than a y~ar ;would be required to build COUNTESS, but some machine division 

engineers got an idea they could build an attachment to a printer 

in 5 weeks to do a small part of tl~1e job. Since this machine was 

so easy to make, it was called MISTRESS. 

I have mentioned two machine components which may be unfamiliar 

to you. I will refer to them again, and you will doubtless hear of 

them in years to conie, so a brief explanation may be desirable. 

First, magnetic tape. The magnetic tape used on our machines is 

very much like that used on standard voice recorders. The recordings we make are not of voice signals, but are numbers and letters. 

They are represented on the tape by spots of magnetization and 

spots of no magnetization, in much the same fashion that dots and 

dashes of Morse code represent characters. The chief advantages of 

magnetic tape are that it can be read or written upon quickly and 

that it is a compact and reusable storage medium~ Some tape systems 

can ·record 100 characters per inch, which is a greater condensation 

than even printed matter. This reelj which contains 1200 feet of 

tape, could hold almost li million characters, or the contents.of a 

700 page novel. · 

The second machine component is the magnetic drum. This is a 

cylinder, and comes in sizes ranging from as small as your fist to 

as large as its prototype, the big bass drum. The cylindrical 

surface is capable of being magnetized locally in tiny spots, very 

similar to what happens on magnetic tape. Both writing upon the 

drum and reading from it must be done while the drum is in motion, 

rotating at high speed on its axis. The reading and writing are 

done by what are called heads, poised just above the surface of the 

drum. Each head watches a particular track on the drum, and the 

electrical circuits external to the drum take care of switching 

from one track to another. 

So much for the hardware; let's return to the problems which 

machines solve. We have seen that comparators give aid o~ the 

general nature of finding messages which have been enciphered by 

the same key. A natural question is "what is done to read these 

messages in depth"? 
•• 

REF ~B-: A66701 

EO 3.3(h)(2) 

PL 86-36/50 USC 3605 

be done. How many groups must be tried? How many answers can one 

keep track of? How many hopeful solutions divert a person from a 

systematic trial of all the possibilit;es? 

¥.achines cannot match people in getting ~d~as-ab9ut what group 

to try, and in carrying on the sense of the text from one group to 

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REF ~11>-:A66701 EO 3 . 3 ( h) ( 2 ) 

PL 86-36/50 USC 3605 

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the next. But they can make a large number of tests, they are 

dependably accurate ~nd,thorough, they operate at high speed, and 

they·don•t get tired or discouraged. Machine aid may not be 

necessary, but the fact is that it is used up to the limit of our 

present equipment strength. · 

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PL 86-36/50 USC 3605 

I do not wish to give the impression that the output \of the 

machine is a completely deciphered message. At one point there 

may be a gap because the vocabulary of the machine was too limited; 

at another a multitude of answers which we hope contains the correct 

one. The· selection of final answers and the completion of the 

message are tasks which.properly a person should do. We hope; 

however, that his energies have been saved for this final process 

by letting the machine do the dirty work of trying countle~s possibilities. · 

. Occasionally our analysts have good reason to suspect that\key 

used on other messages and recovered by various devious means has 

been used again. If we.could only try all that key on messages as 

they come in, some of them would read. This is a very sound proposition -- the way to read a message is to read it. There is a 

\\\\ 

DEMON and SKATE could be called single or multi-purpose ma.chines. 

SLED advances into a new dimension, that of a general analytic machine. 

SLED has had many applications.in which it is more than a recognizing 

machine. There are two things which allow this, first, the fact that 

internal components can be joined together in a large variety of ways 

so that SLED becomes a different machine for each problem. Second, 

several methods of scoring results are available. Examples of problems 

for which the machines was not designed, but to which it has made 

significant contribution are those concerned with wired rotor encipher- ment. _ .... 

We have been talking of examples of limited specialization. A 

comparator is applicable only where comparing and counting will reveal 

something of significance about a set of messages. Although we might 

do comparing using other machines, a well-designed comparator can beat 
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REF m~A66701 

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all types of machines at its job. A recognition device is pointed 

in another direction -- at combining material in many ways, and 

selecting those combinations which are declared to be meaningful. 

Even as we build machines for special purposes, however, we try to 

make them more useful by being more flexible in the problems they 

can handle. But occasionally the volume or complexity of a given 

type of job is so great that equipment may be justified for just 

one purpose. We will sacrifice generality for specialization and 

flexibility for speed. 

MAISIE is an example of a machine which was designed for just 

one purpose -- to decode messages. .You understand that there is 

no magic in this -- the machine only supplies the meanings of code 

groups which we already know. We are seeking to save the valuable 

time of linguists so that it will not be spent in fumbling with a 

bulky code book. Over the years this process has been performed 

on standard IBM equipment. The IBM process requires 9 distinct 

machine operations to produce a set of decoded messages. A~er 

key punching the original message, we number the several cards and 

remove the heading cards which separate one message from the next. 

We have to make one card for each code group. The code groups 

must be sorted in numerical order;· a mas~er deck of cards containing 

code group and meaning has to be merged into the single code cards 

from the messages; the meanings have to be gang punched from the 

master cards into the message cards. The cards must be rearranged 

into their original message ox:der, and then we are ready for the 

listing of the decoded message. If a machine could be devised 

which would eliminate these many cards we would have a better process •. 

The saving on card costs would be trivial, but the .saving of labor 

and machine costs, and of elapsed time would be significant. 

These ideas led to our present decoding machine called MAISIE. 

Technological progress produced the magnetic drum which is MAISIE's 

equivalent of the code book. On the surface of the drum it is 

possible to store the 10,000 groups of a particular code and their 

meanings. MAISIE takes in the original key punched cards and looks. 

up each group on the drum. If the meaning of the group exists on 

the drum, MAISIE sends it to the printer to be listed. MAISIE works 

fast enough to keep up with the maximum speed of the printer -- that 

is, it can look up 150 groups each minute. While MAISIE is fast in 

its final phases, and has succeeded in simplifying the operation or 

decoding from 9 operations to only 3, the keypunching must still be 

done, and takes as long as it ever did, so·the total job of machine 

decoding using MAISIE is only about twice as fast as IBM decoding • 

. . -
REF -I~:A66701 EO 3 . 3 ( h) ( 2 ) 

PL 86-36/50 USC 3605 

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We wish we had had MAISIE during the Korean war. We made thousands 

of decodes by IBM, and they were of great assistance to analysts 

working on that area. Even a mere doubling of the speed of \production would have been a blessing to them. 

As is typical of many machines, applications were found \for 

MAISIE which go beyond her obvious capabilities. Techniques have 

been developed which allow her to do decipherment as well as decoding. In one particular application MAISIE does polyalphabetic 

decipherment of a two letter code at the rate of 50 digraphs a 

minute, which is ten times the IBM speed and 25 times the hand \speed • 

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9, 

REF -IP.: A66701 ,.-

which govern the nature of the key it produces. 

However, when two messages on the same key are not available, 

or will not yield enough key to work with, machine assistance is 

available and essential. This may range from having special counts 

made on standard IBM equipment on into the use of the newest class 

of machines, the computers. The computers can handle a statistical 

approach to the problem of wheel recovery. They accept messages 

representing about 2,000.letters of consecutive key, write the cipher 

out in various patterns, perform certain calculations and come up 

with suggested wheel patterns. They are even used to make an exhaustive check on the validity of patterns which people have developed, 

but which hav~ not yet been proved to be perfect. 

The second problem, that of finding what part of the long and 

fully known key stream was used to encipher a particular message is 

the one we have worked at longer using machines. You appreciate 

that· if we know the key stream and know where in the stream the 

message was enciphered, all we have to do is remove the key from 

the ciph~r to get the plain text. The oldest attack on the problem 

is the method of cribbing. The tenn crib refers to a word, or a 

phrase which probably is contained somewhere in the plain text of 

the message at hand. If the probable word or phrase can be placed 

at the correct spot in the message, it will yield a little bit of 

key. 

KEY 

CIPHER 

CRIB 

TEXT 

AIHAMTESPR TRNNFRT 

CBYWYEUSMZ 

DNTPSGLSYTFZKJFNMRSGLDAVIYF_ 

XCONTRIBUT 

XVOLUNTARY IONSXTO 

This little bit of key will be somewhere in the long stream which 

the ma.chine can produce. If we can find this little bit in the 

long stream, the key that is adjacent to it will allow us to recover the plain text which is adjacent to the crib. Of course we 

may place the crib against the cipher message in the wrong place. 

KEY 

CIPHER 

CRIB 

APHCLXTTSM 

DNTPSGLSYTFZKJFNMRSGLDAVIYF 

XCONTRIBUT 

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PL 86-36/50 USC 3605 

If we do we are looking for a bit of key which should not exist in 

the long stream, and we will probably not find it. Or again,\ if our 

probable word fails in all positions, it probably wasn't in that 

message, and we'll have to try a different. word. If you'll just 

consider hunting for a particular ten letters of key thru a stream 

of 101 million, when there is a possibility of their not being 

present, I think that you will realize why ma.chine aid on this problem is used and appreciated. 
J 

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REF-~: A6670_1. 

EO 3 . 3 ( h) ( 2 ) 

PL 86-36/50 USC 3605 

Since 'WW II we have seen the rapid growth of a new class of 

equipment both within the Agency and in the outside scientific and 

business world; these are the electronic digital computers. The 

versatility of these computers is well demonstrated by their variety 

of applications -- from prediction of presidential election results 

to aero-dynamics research; from supply inventory work to automatic 

translation; from number theory research to cryptanalysis. 

NSA has currently, we believe, the largest computer installation 

in the world, a fact which we solicit your cooperation in keeping out 

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of the newspapers. The largest outside computer installation we 

know of has 3 computers; ·the National Security Agency has five, and 

2 more are now being crated for delivery next month. 

INITIAL COST WE HAVE DATE RECEIVED 

ATLAS I $1,300,000 2 1950, 1954 

ABNER $ 6oo,ooo 1 1952 

IBM-701 $ 33,000 1 1953 

(monthly) 

ATLAS II $2,300,000 1 1953 

You notice that these ~chines are ~~nsire· Another indication of how expensive they are is the fact tnat pr vate owners and government 

agencies who rent their computers to others charge from 50 to 300 

dollars per hour of use. 

The public press has already created the proper atmosphere of 

amazement about computers. The high speeds of computers allow them 

to do in hours what a clerk or·a mathematician would take years to 

do. They are not baffled by complexity, they are capable of doing 

a problem two different ways to ensure accuracy~ they never get tired. 

Our computers are like those on the outside, so there is no need to 

try your patience with facts to amaze. We shall spend a few minutes 

considering the basic structure of any computer. After that we will 

examine some of the general uses which are made of our computers. 

Of what does a computer consist? 

First there must be a means of getting information into the system; 

we call this input. Punched cards, punched paper tape, and hand 

operated pushbuttons are some of the ways of talking to the machine. 

Once the information is converted into the kind of electrical signals 

that the computer can digest it is normally stored in a portion of 

the machine for later reference. · This part we might call its memory, 

or storage. It may help you to think of this as thousands of pigeonholes, each capable of receiving, holding, and giving out a n'Q.Jllber 

or an alphabetic quantity the size of a code group. There are manY'--·-

kinds of components which provide storage; as examples we might recall the magnetic drum and magnetic tapes that I memtioned earlier. 

.. ... .,, 

---- ---
REF-JJn;li: A66701 

There is an upper limit to the amount of information some components 

can hold; for example, a magnetic drum is limited by its size. The 

only present medium witb unlimited capacity is magnetic tape -- simply 

put on another reel. These s~orage systems have been the subject or 

much research, for besides quantity stored we want of them another 

characteristic -- the ability to get to any one of thousands of pieces 

of informatiQn in the shortest possible time. A curious paradox exists 

if it_takes up little space, you can't get at the ~nformation quickly; 

if you can get at it quickly it takes a lot of room to house it. Until 

research provides the one right answer, we compromise. Have one storage 

system for quickness, another for greater velum.~, perhaps a third for 

unlimited capacity. 

There is always an arithmetic unit in which addition, subtraction, 

multiplication and division can be performed. 

The results which a computer develops or finds must be presented 

in normal language, so some type of output is provided. This may be 

a printed record, Qr may be a medium from which a printed record can 

be made -- punched cards or punched tape. 

Finally we must deal with the question, how does the computer 

know what to do? Well, these. machines are ~ided through what is 

called a program. This is a list of detailed instructions which tell 

the machine not only the operations to be performed, but the specific 

data to be used in each operation and where to put each result. The 

program must take care of every possible condition encountered in a 

sequence of operations, all checks to guarantee that the machine is 

not making errors, all specifications for retaining information and 

printing the answers. The program must even contain an instruction 

to stop when the desired procedure has been completed. This program 

which instructs the ma.chine to perform some three dozen simple operations 

upon the thousands -0f pieces of information which it holds in its memory, 

is usually itself stored in this memory. This has several advantages, 

one of which'is that once started the.machine requires no further 

hunian or outside aid, but becomes quite automatic. Another is that 

once the program is stored in the machine it can be operated upon like 

any other piece of data in the memory. This allows us to write certain 

basic instructions which cause the computer to change many details and 

in effect make up its own program as it goes along. For operations 

which are repeated many times, this is economical, both in the time ~B 

people who could not possibly h9pe to write as speedily as the co~puter, 

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and in the storage of the program which may be much less than if 

absolutely every detail were specified. This leads us to the final 

element of any computer, the control. This part takes care of selecting the instructions in the proper sequence, interpreting them 

for "what do we want to do", and "on what piece of data are we to 

operate". It selects the data, and sets up circuits in the machine 

so that the operation is executed properly. These steps take place 

so rapidly that they seem simultaneous to us and almost unimportant. 

But the control is the heart of the machine. 

On~ might characterize computers as very fast, and capable of 

accurate memory of a rather large amount of material. One might also 

call them very stup_ihd in that every step must be guided by detailed 

instructions. But we must give them credit for being above all, 

obedient. Like many people, they will swiftly: and eage~ly do wrong 

when they are wrongly instructed. In performance the machine is only 

as good as the people who define the problems and run the equipment. 

The writing of programs for the Agency has become a new profession 

which requires d~ep knowledge of the machine, excellent appreciation 

of cryptanalytic techniques, much logical skill, and a great deal of 

patience. The maintenance of such complex machines requires a Sherlock 

Holmes in the field of electronics, for the trouble must be located 

before it can be cured. 

Here are the computers used by this Agency. 

ATLAS I was our first high speed computer. It was built for us 

by Engineering Research Associates, now a part of Remington Rand. We 

have two of these machines. From time'to time modifications are made 

to take advantage of technological advances; for example, high speed 

magnetic core storage is to be added in 1955. 

ABNER is a computer of which the Agency is proud with the pride 

of parenthood. Almost all of the design and construction was done 

by Agency engineers. ABNER contains some special commands and facilities which make it somewhat more adaptable to cryptanalytic problems 

than computers primarily designed for mathematical computation. It 

is almost impossible to get a good picture of ABNER because of the 

limited space in which it is installed. We expect a second ABNER this 

fall. 

The 701 computer. is an IBM product. When we rent this and other 

machines from IBM, we get the services of .fUl.l time maintenance men; 

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we furnish operations and programming personnel. This is not a picture 

of our 701 installation, which like ABNER is difficult to photograph, 

but we have every unit r~presented here. -

ATLAS II is another ERA product, and will shortly be joined by a 

second machine. The second machine will have a magnetic core storage 

system, which is the newest fast, compact, and reliable method of 

storing infonnation. 

I agree with you that dollars, massive equipment, components and 

amazing speeds are· still no indication of why this agency has computers. 

The real question is, what have they done for us, what can they do? 

Theoretically they can do anything, since they present us the opportunity 

.to layout the simple operations in any combination that we wish to 

achieve our purpose. Practically,, there are limitations of capacities 

and time. An impressive total, of 350 programs has been written, each 

designed to fill some need of the Agency. We think enough of the usefulness and the economics of our computers that as soon as they can be 

staffed they are in operation 24 hours a day and there is still more 

demand for their use than we-can fill. 

Aniong the simpler types of jobs have been programs to perform 

routine decryption of messages, to make and score fr~quency distributions; and to perform calculations associated with-direction finding, 

the multiplication of matrices, and various other .mathematical jobs. 

Here, the computers allow us to complete relatively simple tasks in 

a fraction of the time previously required. A simple example of this 

kind of use of a computer is found in a diagnostic program on ABNER. 

For many years it has been the dream of cryptanalytic people to have 

counts of many varieties made on messages before an examination of 

them was undertaken. Even with our many other machines., we could not 

find the time to do this. This ABNER program provides a large number 

of related yet varied tallies on a message. It has recently had wide 

use on small and hitherto unworked systems. Just about every count 

and scoring a cryptanalyst will want for initial examination is made 

in about 20 minutes per message, about the time he would use in making 

a simple tally of letter frequencies. 

The single greatest stream of endeavor for computers has been 

attack upon problems whose intricacy.and size.never permitted machine 

treatment before.- The mathematicians of Research and Development 

EO 3 . 3 ( h) ( 2 ) 

PL 86-36/50 USC 3605 
REF ltD.;A66701 

EO 3 . 3 ( h) ( 2 ) 

PL 86-36/50 USC 3605 

other, and provided one ~an assume or develop some facts a.bout.the 

nature of the different· keys which were used to encipher them. The 

processes are highly sophisticated, and only machines like \computers 

can car out the manifold com utations in a reasonable amol.Ult of 

There are large jobs, to be done only once, which.have been 

approachable in the past only by building a piece.of machinery to~ 

do each one. Since the computers can be directed to do almost any 

problem, we can sometimes let the computer'be the special machine, 

as directed by its program. Investigations of this kind generally 

arise out of a desire to have some thousands of letters of key 

generated by a newly posed rule, so that our security organization 

can pass judgement upon the practical results of the use of the new 

key generation technique. Computers can serve as a stop-gap until 

special machines.can be built. The Machine Division a year ago had 

a request for a desk side device to perform simple decipherment. A 

month was required to build the device. But in 10 days a computer 

program was in operation to do the decipherment and was used until 

the special device was available. · 

As an investigative tool, the computers allow us to examine the 

virtue of anal ic a roaches. Several ro rams on 701 and ABNER 

deals with ~he possibility of machines and processes. Is it possible 

for a machine to accept incoming teletype tape and produce a message 

which is cleared o'f all nonessentials, which is in a standard format, 

ready for hand work or for machine work? As a by-product of the 

processing can we produce cards to be used for other machine work 

without the intervention of keypunching, which always will be a slow 

process when done by hand. Such researches into the field of automatic editing are under way. They may point to better computer 

techniques, they may reveal how a special machine could be built ~o 

do the job better than the present combination of ma.chine and hand 

methods. 
REF !B_iA66701 

Finally, we would all be disappointed if the coming of new 

machines did not relieve us of some of the older machines and 

techniques. Certain special-process machines were embarrassing us 

by the space they took up and the excessive amount of fixing they 

required. .As soon as the computers could demonstrate their equivalence or excellence in this field, out went COPPERHEAD, the multiple 

group repeat device; out went 0 1MALLEY, a special machine used to 

perform crossproduct multiplication and summation. The computers 

now handle their functions. 

In swmnary, our uses of computers are: 

1. Time-saving 

2. Intricate cryptanalytic attacks 

3. Special one-time jobs 4. Investigative tools 

5. Replacement of other mac_hines and techniques 

A few years from now a more systematic story can be told of how 

computers help this Agency. The immediately possible has been done; 

investigations which will produce long.range results have been started; 

the computers are getting into hitherto unapproachable fields of machine 

processing; they are replacing other machines. As they find their own 

limitations they will help to describe the machines of the future. 

·Now, what about the ma.chines of the future: 

Even today plans are under consideration which include in our future 

equipment the latest technological advances and permit new applications 

of machines to our problems. During the next few years you may expect 

to see experiments and actual performance in some of the following 

fields: 

1. Data handling - IBM 702, 703 

2. Plotting of D/F and radar location 

3. Automatic scanning 4. Automatic editir:ig and card punching . 5. Central computation under decentralized control 

6. Special functions using generalized components 

7. ·Automatic reading 

Next Spring a whole new vista in data handling will open when we 

receive the IBM 702 Tape Processing Machine and the 70J-F±3:e--Mamt·enance _____ - --

Machine and ancillary equipment. While this equipment can compute, it 

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REF J:a..;A66701 EO 3 . 3 ( h) ( 2 ) 

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· is different from a computer. The rest of our computers work most 

efficiently on problems which.allow small input, large processing, 

and small output of answers. The 702 complex will work well on 

problems with large input,. large processing and large output. This 

should make it possible for us to give problems such as traffic 

analysis the high speed high' volume processing which they have.never 

had. 

At present 35 clerks scan the automatically recorded intercept 

of plain text to sift from it items of intelligence value. Their 

guide is their human intelligence and the ability to remember certain 

key words they ~ave been told to watch for. The very existence of 

recognition devices which can recognize such uniform data as code 

groups is a challenge to us to build machines which scan faster than 

.People. The machines will be capable of making a message print at 

the same time, at line printer speed rather than in a separate operation 

at typewriter speed. 

I have already mentioned automatic editing experiments on the 

computers. We will someday see machines which will perform this 

·'function probably at· greater speeds than computers. Savings of 60 

to 1 over hand methods are anticipated. 

Industrial applications have demonstrated that a central computer 

can serve the needs of.decentralized users. The users will teletype 

their problem into the central machine, and in minutes they ~11 receive an answer based on all the data available at the central machine. 

The users cou;t.d be two floors above, or they could be across an ocean. 

Generalized components will be built which can be attached in 

.many different ways to make machines for special purposes. The time 

involved in building special purpose machines may be reduced from 2 

or more years to 2 or more months. Incidentally, we have done this 

thru the ·years as over 75 attachments were built to be used wit~---·· --

for special functions. What is envisioned here are devices of far 

greater complexity and speed which will deal primarily with machine 

cipher problems. 

''. . /'. )I ' . , . . : -· . - I I .. 
Ambitious strides are being made in the field of automatic - reading. -Machines will scan hard copy and translate the letters on 

it into paper tapes, IBM cards or such other media as will serve 

further machine processes. Our keypunchers are not at all dismayed 

by this development for they know that no machine will successfully 

decipher the handwriting of a left handed Lower Slobbovian as it 

looks on the fourth carbon. Keypunchers still have a future. 

Speaking of futures, does it seem that if you're not in the 

machine division; you haven't one? Far from it. Machines are 

directed by the ideas and the efforts of people. The results they 

find are examined and used by people. Often the more machine help 

available, the more work done. Dr. Campaigne, in describing the 

impact of machines on· handwork states "••• there are in fact more 

hand jobs than before. These require.more analytic ability and 

bring more pressure on the people in order to make the best use of 

the machines." 

The panorama of our analytic ma.chines ~ich you have justuseen 

includes something of the past, the present, and the future. The 

Machine Division sti,ares the hope of our Agency that we will be of 

aid in.keeping our country out of war. But if we got into a war, 

what could we do? 

If the past war is' any indication, communications intelligence 

would be of inestimable value, and analytic machines would provide 

more o·f it. Unforttinate disclosures have ma.de public knowledge of 

this countt.v•s success against enemy communications in the last war. 

Fortunately this public knowledge does not indicate that 750 IBM 

machines and some 200 other analytic ma.chines were in part responsible 

for the success and the volume of the success. Even today we are 

under orders to guard these past successes as securely as our present 

ones. Yet there is every reason to expect that since those infant 

agencies succeeded so splendidly in the days when they were learning 

how to use .machines to perform cryptanalysis, this present organization 

could do an even better job today should the emergeμcy be upon us. 

It may be upon us today. We are ready for it. ¥/ 

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