American Cryptology during the Cold War - The Black Vault

Ib) (3) -P.L. 86-36
The relationship between ERA and the Navy was emblematic ofthe way relationships
had developed between the cryptologists and private industry. During the war OP-20-G
had developed a close relationship with IBM, Eastman Kodak, and National Cash
Register. SIS had a similar kind of relationship with Bell Laboratories and Teletype
Corporation. Those businesses kept a stable of cleared people who could do jobs quickly
and quietly for the cryptologists. In the COMINT and COMSEC businesses, it did not pay to
advertise. 6
Both the bombe and ENIAC had been developed through classified wartime military
contracts. Thus computing in the United States began in the rarified atmosphere of tight
security. Though the cryptanalytic aspects were not publicized, the Army relationship
with the Moore School became a matter ofpublic knowledge in 1946 when the inventors of
ENIAC, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, gave a series of lectures on electronic
computers. As the two men left the Moore School to establish a computer manufacturing
company, they dispersed their knowledge nationwide in what became known as the Moore
School Lectures. Many felt that this lecture series launched the computer industry in the
United States. 7
Howard Engstrom had found out about the Moore School/Lectures, and he suggested
that the Navy send a cryptologist to observe. Thus, when theilectures began, sitting in the
back of the room was Lieutenant Commander James T. Pendergrass, a Navy
mathematician employed at Nebraska Avenue. Pendergrass delivered a report to the
Navy on the Moore lectures which focused attention on the emerging new computer
technology. This resulted in negotiations with ERA whiCh led to the construction of the
Atlas machine. 8
Like the bombe before it, the first generation of postwar cryptologic computers
produced highly specialized machines, called in those days "rapid analytic machines"
(RAMs). Each machine was constructed for a different purpose and attacked a different
cryptanalytic machine or problem. Programs were /particular rather than general, and
inputs and outputs were of specialized design. A listof AFSA machines, both present and
projected, in 1952 contained sixty RAMs, as opposed to only eight that had more flexible
objectives. 9 An example ofa RAM wa~ rhich was developed by ERA to attack
I
to
Even in those early days computer companies were willing to take on difficult
developmental tasks. For instance, ()perating under a 1947 contract, ERA developed the
world's first magnetic drum storage system~spart ofa RAM project called GOLDBERG. ll A
successor project, called ATLAS (also built by ERA), (ipplied the drum storage technology to
a more general purpose cryptanalytic processor. ATL.A.Sw(iS ERA's first major computer
development, and it led to the company's first commercialprQduct, the ERA 1101,
produced after the company had become merged with Remington-Rand~Univacto form the
first major American computer company.12
Ib) (1)
Ib) (3) -50 USC 403
Ib) (3) -18 USC 798
Ib) (3) -P.L. 86-36
IIANBhe VIA 'Hl:heN'f lEe {fI6he e6MHf'f e6H'fft6h S?S'feMS66Hf'fL?
NOT REI E A i A Qbg ~9 F9RI"JI6N lifATIONALS
198