Abstract
In the period between the two World Wars Americans struggled with the morality and the cost of reading other people’s mail. Herbert Yardley created his American Black Chamber and established for the first time that the United States should be in the position to protect itself and further it’s own interests with the use of permanent professional cryptographers and cryptanalysts. William Friedman, working in the Army, established the organization that would be the Army cryptologic backbone during the Second World War. Friedman and the team he put together during the 1930s would move American cryptology into the machine age in both cryptography and cryptanalysis. Despite Yardley’s flaws and failure American would never again be without a cryptanalytic bureau. This chapter briefly examines the professional lives of Herbert Yardley and William Friedman and discusses their contributions to the growth of the American cryptologic infrastructure.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The Friedmans would later write the definitive work debunking this hypothesis, The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined (Friedman and Friedman 1958).
References
Albright, Major Owen S. 1929. Letter to Signal Corps ACoS. Memorandum for ACoS, Signal Corps, July 19, 1929.
Angevine, Robert G. 1992. Gentlemen Do Read Each other’s Mail: American Intelligence in the Interwar Era. Intelligence and National Security 7 (2): 1–29.
Barker, Wayne G. 1979. The History of Codes and Ciphers in the United States During the Period Between the World Wars, Part I. 1919–1929. Edited by Wayne G. Barker. Paperback. Vol. 22. Cryptographic Series 22. Laguna Hills: Aegean Park Press.
———. 1989. The History of Codes and Ciphers in the United States During the Period Between the Wars: Part II. 1930–1939. Edited by Wayne G. Barker. Paperback. Vol. 54. Laguna Park: Aegean Park Press.
Burke, Colin. 2011. Agnes Meyer Driscoll vs. the Enigma and the Bombe. Self-Published on the Web, 132.
Callimahos, Lambros D. 1974. The Legendary William F. Friedman. Cryptologic Spectrum 4 (1): 8–17.
Clark, Ronald. 1977. The Man Who Broke Purple. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Denniston, Robin. 2007. Thirty Secret Years: A.G. Denniston’s Work in Signals Intelligence 1914–1944. Vol. paperback. Book, Whole. Clifton-upon-Teme: Polperro Heritage Press.
Dooley, John F. 2013. 1929–1931: A Transition Period in U.S. Cryptologic History. Cryptologia 37 (1): 84–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/01611194.2012.687432.
———. 2015. Review of George Fabyan by Richard Munson. Cryptologia 39 (1): 92–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/01611194.2014.974785.
Fagone, Jason. 2017. The Woman Who Smashed Codes. Hardcover. New York: William Morrow.
Friedman, William F., and Elizebeth S. Friedman. 1958. The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined. Vol. hardcover. Book, Whole. London: Cambridge University Press.
Gladwin, Lee A. 2003. Alan M. Turing’s Critique of Running Short Cribs on the US Navy Bombe. Cryptologia 27 (1): 50–54 https://doi.org/10.1080/0161-110391891757.
Hanyok, R. 1998. Madame X: Agnes in Twilight, The Last Years of the Career of Agnes Driscoll, 1941–1957. Cryptologic Almanac 50. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/crypto_almanac_50th/Madame_X_Agnes_in_Twilight.pdf.
———. 2002. Madame X: Agnes Meyer Driscoll and U.S. Naval Cryptology, 1919–1940. Ft. George Meade: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency. https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/crypto-almanac-50th/assets/files/Madame_X_Agnes_Meyer_Driscoll.pdf.
Johnson, Kevin Wade. 2015. The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll. Special Series, Volume 10. Ft. George Meade: NSA Center for Cryptologic History. https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/assets/files/the-neglected-giant/the_neglected_giant_agnes_meyer_driscoll.pdf.
Kahn, David. 1967. The Codebreakers; The Story of Secret Writing. New York: Macmillan.
———. 2004. The Reader of Gentlemen’s Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lujan, Lt Susan M. 1991. Agnes Meyer Driscoll. Cryptologia 15 (1): 47–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/0161-119191865786.
Mundy, Liza. 2017. Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II. New York: Hachette Books.
Singh, Simon. 1999. The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography. Hardcover. New York: Doubleday.
Smith, G. Stuart. 2017a. A Life in Code: Pioneer Cryptanalyst Elizebeth Smith Friedman. Paperback. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. www.mcfarlandpub.com.
———. 2017b. Elizebeth Friedman’s Security and Career Concerns Prior to World War II. Cryptologia 41 (3): 239–246. https://doi.org/10.1080/01611194.2016.1257523.
Yardley, Herbert O. 1931. The American Black Chamber. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dooley, J.F. (2018). The Interwar Period: 1919–1941. In: History of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis. History of Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90443-6_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90443-6_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-90442-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-90443-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)