MD -- Fort Meade -- Natl Cryptologic Museum:
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- NCM_090309_015.JPG: Hobo History:
According to the hobos themselves, a Hobo is a person who travels and works. For centuries, men have traveled around the country finding work here and there, but most modern hobos trace their history to the men who built the railroads after the Civil War.
As eastern factories became industrialized, even more men looked for work out west. They frequently illegally hopped the freight trains to get there.
During the economic depression of the 1870s and on through the 1880s, hobos took to the rails and roads following the seasonal harvests or working the mines, lumber camps, and mills. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, another wave of hobos rode the rails, drove the highways, or even walked the roads looking for work.
Hobos... Who Needs 'Em:
During the Great Depression, the hobos were either welcomed or reviled. The difference depended on the town's need for seasonal work. If there was no work available, the hobos were frequently rebuffed and sometimes even arrested. However, when there was a crop that needed harvesting, hobos were welcomed and appreciated. Hobos provided necessary labor to the camps, mills, fields, and mines. They helped build and sustain America.
Hobo Signs:
Because hobos needed to know which farms were friendly or which towns they should avoid, the hobos created a secret communication system of signs and symbols. Leaving a mark on a fence post, tree, or other permanent object, relayed important information to those who knee what to look for. The hobos used approximately 60 different signs, written in chalk or charcoal, to pass along messages. Because the markings were temporary, and because the meanings were only revealed to other hobos, the code aided them in their travels, but remained secret to the townspeople.
Hobos and Trains:
Following the Civil War, many soldiers took jobs with the railroads laying the new track across the country as the trains expanded west. Between 1866 and 1873, they laid 35,000 miles of new track.
In 1873, an economic depression hit the country and more men found themselves out of work. They went looking for jobs far from home and used the trains to transport them across the country. The men rode the rails, illegally hopping aboard trains as they pulled away from the train yards. They'd hop off in another town hundreds of miles away looking for an opportunity to work.
Thousands of men (and a few women) called themselves hobos. They moved with the seasons and the harvests, frequently by train, working when and where they chose.
- NCM_090309_023.JPG: Chunk of the Pentagon
- NCM_090309_027.JPG: The Rosetta Stone:
Today, the language of the ancient Egyptians lives again. We can read their poems, their stories, study their religious texts, and learn about their lives through their own words. An entire civilization speaks again, as a result of the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone. Napoleon's soldiers uncovered the Rosetta Stone in Egypt's Nile delta in 1799. The stone contains an inscription written in three scripts. At the top -- Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the middle -- a cursive form of hieroglyphs known as "Demotic," and at the bottom -- Greek. European scholars, who were expert in Greek, used that language as a key to "break" the hieroglyphs, almost like a secret code; many contributed to the eventual solution, and a young Frenchman, Jean-Francois Champollion, in 1824 published the first consistent system for reading the ancient language.
- NCM_090309_060.JPG: Remains of Francis Gary Powers' U-2:
Debris of the sheathing from the American reconnaissance jet, Lockheed U-2, which was shot down by guided anti-aircraft rockets on 1 May 1960, over the Soviet Union in the vicinity of Sverdlovsk.
The remains of the aircraft were taken to Moscow and put on display in the Armed Forces Central Museum. Now they can be exhibited in both our museums.
- NCM_090309_068.JPG: Venona translations used during the formal NSA public release ceremony held at CIA HQ July 11, 1995.
- NCM_090309_075.JPG: The one-time paper tape device was used in conjunction with the SIGTOT cipher system aboard President Roosevelt's airplane, a Douglas C-54 named "Sacred Cow."
- NCM_090309_089.JPG: SIGABA:
Known to German cryptanalysts during World War II as the "American Big Machine," SIGABA was without a doubt the most secure COMSEC device in use by any nation involved in the war.
The development of SIGABA stemmed from the US Army and Navy attempts to develop a cipher machine suitable for high level communications. Working together beginning in 1935, the two services (in a spirit of cooperation rare for the times), used what had been a Navy electric cipher machine and modified it with a rotor stepping concept developed by the Army. The resulting machine began what was to be two decades of operational use in 1938.
There is no known instance of SIGABA generated cipher being broken during World War II.
- NCM_090309_110.JPG: Irregular notched disk cipher: Prototype 1920s
- NCM_090309_125.JPG: Hot Line: East German Teleprinter
- NCM_090309_129.JPG: STU-II secure phone
- NCM_090309_133.JPG: The Day Our World Changed:
As Director of Communications Dan Bartlett points to news footage of the World Trade Center Towers burning. President George W Bush gathers information using a STU-II secure phone about the attack while at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. September 11, 2001.
- NCM_090309_142.JPG: SIGSALY Speech Encipherment System
- NCM_090309_146.JPG: Model of US seal given to the US embassy in Moscow, which contains a transmitter inside used to spy on us.
- NCM_090309_167.JPG: Dress dagger and rank insignia for Nazi high government officials
- NCM_090309_176.JPG: Enigma machine
- NCM_090309_203.JPG: Japanese Navy RED Machine:
The US Navy captured this Japanese Navy cipher machine. Like its diplomatic counterpart, the navy machine separated the "alphabet" into two subgroups. However, instead of using the Romanized spellings, it has a katakana keyboard. It is believed that due to the difficulty in using and maintaining the machine, the Navy Red saw little use by the Japanese Fleet.
Analogs for Decrypting RED:
William Friedman, Chief of the Army's Signal Intelligence Service, envisioned an electromechanical machine to rapidly decrypt RED messages. It would work much like the Japanese Cipher Machine Type A encrypted messages. However, funding was not available.
For more than two years, the Army cryptanalysts used handmade analogs that consisted of thin, plastic, sixty-point discs with the "sixes and twenties" continuous written along the periphery of each disc.
In the late 1930s, the Navy Yard model shop constructed the electromechanical RED analog. The machine mimicked the actions of the Cipher Machine Type A with its communicators for the sixes and twenties, the breaking wheel that controlled the stepping motion, and the plugboard.
- NCM_090309_227.JPG: JADE:
During World War II, this model of the Japanese Type-97 cipher machine was known to the American cryptanalysts as JADE. JADE was one of three varieties of Japanese machines that used a series of telephone selector switches to encipher or decipher top-level messages. The other two machines were known by the American designators CORAL and PURPLE. The Top Secret messages enciphered by the JADE, CORAL, and PURPLE machines and transmitted by radio were intercepted and decrypted by American Army and Navy Intelligence personnel. The information gained by this source was of the highest level of importance and was instrumental in the Allied victory in the Pacific.
Although no PURPLE cipher machine was ever captured intact, it is believed that PURPLE looked very much like JADE. This JADE machine was captured in Saipan in June 1944.
- NCM_090309_234.JPG: PURPLE:
This is the largest of three surviving pieces of the famous Japanese diplomatic cipher machine. It was recovered from the wreckage of the Japanese embassy in Berlin, 1945.
- NCM_090309_242.JPG: Improved Analog for Japanese PURPLE:
The analog to the Japanese diplomatic cipher, called PURPLE by the US Army cryptanalysts, was first built in 1940 by the Army's Cryptanalytic Branch.
The machine deciphered Japanese PURPLE diplomatic communications after the daily settings had been determined.
The Army improved the analog in March 1944. This is the improved version.
- NCM_090309_252.JPG: SP 600 Super Pro Receiver
- NCM_090309_260.JPG: The M-209:
Based on a design by the Swedish inventor Boris Hagelin, the M-209 (Navy CSP-1500) was adopted for American use as a tactical cipher device in 1942. When used properly, it provided adequate tactical COMSEC in both World War II and the Korean War. The M-209 was manufactured by LC Smith & Corona Typewriters, Inc.
The proven and trusted SIGABA and SIGTOT cipher systems were used to secure strategic information.
- NCM_090309_270.JPG: CRI 43007 transmitter-receiver used by the Navajo Code Talkers
- NCM_090309_294.JPG: Enigma Uhr:
The "Uhr" (clock) was a mechanical device used by the German armed forces in World War II to further increase the security of the Enigma.
When the clock plugs were substituted for the original ones in the Enigma plugboard, the electrical current was directed through the clock. By simply turning the large knob on the clock, the Enigma operator could select 40 different plugging arrangements without actually rearranging the plugs!
- NCM_090309_305.JPG: Das Heer (Army):
The three rotor Enigma became the cryptologic workhorse of the German land forces before World War II and continued as such until V-E Day. Rugged, completely portable, and requiring no external power source, the machine was ideally suited to the highly mobile "lightening" type of war envisioned and practiced by the German High Command.
Although a few German officers felt that Enigma could be broken by a determined cryptanalytic attack, and prevailing feeling was that the time needed by the cryptanalyst to produce intelligence from traffic enciphered on Enigma was so great that its value would be lost -- no serious effort was made to determine otherwise.
- NCM_090309_310.JPG: Operational Rotors:
To further enhance Enigma's security, the German military issued extra rotors with each machine -- two for Army and Air Force machines and four for Navy. Each rotor was wired differently and identified with a Roman numeral. Setting up a communications net involved selecting the rotors for the day and placing them in the machine in the proper left-to-right order.
- NCM_090309_318.JPG: Die Luftwaffe (Air Force):
Like the Army, the German Air Force relied on the Enigma for communications security. As a result of radio intercept and timely cryptanalysis, which was aided by poor COMSEC on German radio nets, plans such as those for the decisive air attacks known as the "Battle for Britain" were revealed to the British well in advance of the intended strike. The losses suffered by the German Air Force during this time were never regained.
- NCM_090309_327.JPG: Die Kriegsmarine (Navy):
With a naval force small in numbers, but technically advanced, the German Naval High Command, in order to offset Allied numerical superiority, adopted a strategy designed to conceal as much as possible the location, intention, and movement of its forces.
Forced by its nature to rely on radio communications, the German Navy issued to each vessel from battleship to harbor defense craft an Enigma cipher machine to ensure security. Here as with other services, the dependence upon Enigma for communications security proved to be disastrous.
- NCM_090309_334.JPG: Commercial ENIGMA:
This machine, marked in English, "Made in Germany," was intended for commercial export. Such Enigmas were available to anyone who wished to purchase them prior to the Nazi takeover of the German government.
- NCM_090309_340.JPG: "T" Enigma:
A commercial type machine specially wired. Five hundred of these Enigmas were given to the Japanese Navy for joint communications.
- NCM_090309_351.JPG: "G" Enigma:
A specially constructed machine supplied to some foreign governments friendly to Germany. Two hundred "G" Enigmas are known to have been issued to the German Army High Command (OKW) for an unknown "special purpose."
- NCM_090309_360.JPG: The Enigma wired rotor
- NCM_090309_379.JPG: M-9 Bombe Checking Machine:
Since the Allies did not know the Germans' daily rotor selections, several Bombes worked on the same message. Each Bombe tested a different set of wheel orders. The Bombes usually found two sets of possible rotor settings on each run, but only one solution on one Bombe was the correct wheel order and rotor position used by the Germans for that day. After the Bombe completed a run, a WAVE supervisor checked the printed results on this M-9 machine. She checked each result looking for the correct one. Once she found the results, she used the M-9 to fill in any missing plugboard positions. The Bombes could find only a portion of the Stecker positions because the menus were between thirteen and sixteen letters long; two short to find all of the plugboard connections. Having found the correct wheel order, rotor position, and Steckers, the supervisor then sent the results back to the library where WAVES and cryptanalysts used an analog machine and decrypted the message. Short messages could be decrypted directly on the M-9 and WAVES in the library also used the M-9 to work against messages that had other problems, such as garbles.
The Stecker:
To further enhance security, a plugboard ("Stecker" in German) was added to Enigmas produced for military use. The use of this board prior to encryption allowed the operator manually to change the value of any character. The use of ten cords was optimum -- combined with Enigma's other features, this added 150 billion variations to the possible cipher value of any character. The preselected changes would be included on the daily key list. The fact that Stecker combinations were manually selected, unlike rotor and internal wiring, made them unpredictable. This fact added measurably both to Enigma's security and the confidence the German armed forces placed in the machine.
- NCM_090309_389.JPG: Wired Bombe rotor
- NCM_090309_394.JPG: Japanese Enigma-type rotor cipher machine
- NCM_090309_408.JPG: Japanese HF Radio Transceiver:
Simple but effective. This radio receiver was used by Japanese Arm and Naval forces to send and receive Manual Morse messages. This machine could have very well sent Japanese Navy JN25-coded messages. Unlike Enigma or Purple codes which were encrypted by the machines themselves, the JN25 code had thousands of five-digit groups that were contained in code books. Personnel would use these code books to send/encrypt and receive/decrypt these messages.
- NCM_090309_435.JPG: The Little Green Book used by Navajo Code Talkers
- NCM_090309_463.JPG: Cryptographia oder Geheime Schrifft-mund-und Wurckliche Correspondendentz
Johannes Balthasar Friderici, 1684
The NSA Rare Book Collection is a small but significant holding of the oldest and most unusual printed works on cryptology. The volumes date from the 16th to the early 20th centuries, covering much of the entire history of the printed word and including some of the most important scholars and scientists of their times.
The collection is believed to have been begun in the 1930s. During that time, the Signal Intelligence Service under William F. Friedman acquired nearly anything which could be used to study cryptanalytic techniques. Later, when NSA was formed, the books became part of the NSA library system. Today, they are housed in the National Cryptologic Museum, where modern preservation methods protect them from the ravages of time.
The volumes in this exhibit were selected from the most interesting of the collection.
- NCM_090309_473.JPG: Polygraphiae, Johannes Trithemius, 1518
The first published book on cryptology
- NCM_090309_479.JPG: Variis Modis Occulte Scribendi, Christian Breithaupt, 1727
- NCM_090309_491.JPG: Opus Novum (A New Work), Jacopo SIlvestri, 1526:
The oldest volume in the NSA Rare Book Collection and the second published work on cryptology.
- NCM_090309_500.JPG: William F. Friedman, who collected these rare cryptologic manuscripts.
- NCM_090309_524.JPG: Confederate Cipher Reel, c 1863
- NCM_090309_538.JPG: Confederate cipher disk, ca 1863
The principal cryptosystem used by the Confederate government and military was a centuries-old cipher known variously as the "court" or "diplomatic" cipher, now referred to as "the Vigenere" for its 16th century proponent. In its usual form, the alphabetic square or matrix, comprised of 26 alphabets, each slide over by one letter, is combined with a key (usually a phrase) to produce "polyalphabetic substitution." To assist the eye and facilitate use of the cipher, the Confederates manufactured several different types of devices, such as the "reel."
Captured by US forces at the surrender of Mobile, Alabama, in May 1865, this extremely rare relic (only one of two known to have survived the war) bears in faint pencilled notations the names of the Confederate Signal Officer, Captain Thomas Hawkins Clagett, Jr., of Leesburg, Virginia, and several of his men. As a trophy of war, it was sent to the Chief Signal Officer in Washington and later came into the hands of the Signal Intelligence Service, a forerunner of the National Security Agency and the Army's Intelligence and Security Command.
Poor security practices on the part of Confederate users made a potentially sophisticated cipher vulnerable to being read, and the scrambled letters of an enciphered message plagued Confederate telegraphers with frequency garbles often confusing the "code clerks."
- NCM_090309_546.JPG: Union Telegraphic Cipher Book, ca 1861-62:
This small, sweat-stained vest pocket book contains a copy of "Cipher No. 9," the official War Department cryptosystem used in 1863 to secure messages sent by the electromagnetic telegraph. It bears the signature of "J(ohn) C(lark) VanDuzer, Nashville, Tennessee." Captain (later Colonel and Second Assistant Superintendent of the United States Military Telegraph) VanDuzer served as telegrapher and "code clerk" under Generals Grant and Rosecrans, as well as others in the West. This copy is identified as having been used for General Joseph Hooker, Commander of the Army of the Potomac at the battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia (May 1863).
The cryptosystem combines features of transposition cipher (although it shifts words instead of individual letters) and code (substituting a false word for a true word, name, number, date, etc.). Known as "route transposition," and actually several hundred years old at the time, it was introduced into US military telegraph service by Anson Stager, General Superintendent of Western Union and later head of the United States Military Telegraph. It aided telegraphers by giving them recognizable words to guard against garbled reception.
There is no known instance of the breaking of the system by the Confederates, although copies were captured (and superseded). This remained the basic form of cryptography for the US military until 1882, when a new code book was introduced.
- NCM_090309_567.JPG: The Confederate Cipher Disk:
The Confederate cipher disk was made of brass. Only two and one-quarter inches in diameter, it was small enough to easily fit into a vest pocket. The device consisted of two disks with the smaller inner disk revolving on a central pivot. Each disk had the alphabet (reading left to right) imprinted around its circumference. The red letters SS are thought to stand for Secret Service. Only five original examples are known to exist.
- NCM_090309_574.JPG: The Union Cipher Disk:
Made of a light yellow heavy card stock, the Union Cipher Disk was three and three quarter inches in diameter. It consisted of two concentric disks of unequal size revolving on a central pivot. The disks were divided along their outer edges into thirty equal compartments. The smaller inner disk contained letters, terminations and word pauses, while the outer disk contained groups of signal numbers. For easier recognition, the number eight represented two. The initials AJM represent the Chief Signal Officer General Albert J. Myer. Each disk also had a control number used for accountability.
- NCM_090309_576.JPG: US Intercept Station No. 1, Verdun, France, 1918.
American military forces were first introduced to modern warfare in World War I. This war, coming as it did during a period of world industrialization, brought technical advances such as the machine gun and aeroplane which forever changed both the strategy and tactics of combat. In a similar light, the radio, which was still in its infancy, completely revolutionized military communications. The intelligence organizations of the belligerent forces in Europe were well aware of the intelligence to be gained by "listening in" on enemy communications. With borrowed French radio equipment, the US Army's Radio Intelligence Section soon became an active and vital part of the American intelligence effort. Along with the machine gunner and the pilot, the radio intercept operator took his place in the new American Army born in the trenches of "the war to end all wars."
- NCM_090309_590.JPG: Hebern Electric Code Machine, ca. 1918:
In the two decades prior to World War II, Edward H. Hebern (1869-1952) was the first American inventor to make a truly significant contribution to cipher machine development. His machines were the first to embody the wired rotor principle of encipherment. Hebern continued to design and build electromechanical rotor machines until the eve of World War II. For various reasons, he never managed to secure a large scale contract with the US Government.
Displayed here is Hebern's first rotor machine. Employing a single rotor and beautifully made of solid brass the machine worked in conjunction with an electric typewriter. This machine was built before 1920 in Hebern's Oakland, California machine shop.
- NCM_090309_602.JPG: Bombe Rotor
- NCM_090309_608.JPG: Early West European Communications Security Device:
This cipher device was used by the Ministry of the Interior of Denmark to secure its communications at least from 1910-1914, although the device itself may well be older. The device is quite flexible and allows for frequent changes of setting: the individual letters are inscribed on ivory tiles -- they may be taken out and easily rescrambled around the central disk. No manual of use survives; however, the Danish Ministry probably issued an accompanying chart listing the letter arrangements and changes for a stated period, daily, weekly, or monthly.
The cryptographic principles embodied in this device date back to the 15th Century. The Italian scholar Leon Battista Alberti wrote an essay in 1466 laying out the principles of polyalphabetic substitution. (A modern reprinting of Alberti's work may be found in the museum library.)
The principles may be centuries old, but they have been used in a number of modern US cryptosecurity devices. For example, the cipher disk codenamed CIRCE, found in the exhibit on communications security in the Vietnam era, used the Alberti principles.
The cipher device is a gift of the government of Denmark.
- NCM_090309_667.JPG: Captain Lloyd Bucher's shirt
- NCM_090309_673.JPG: Captain Lloyd Bucher's coat
- NCM_090309_705.JPG: General alarm from the USS Liberty, which the Israeli's accidentally sank
- Wikipedia Description: National Cryptologic Museum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The United States National Cryptologic Museum is a museum of cryptography history, affiliated with the National Security Agency (NSA). Located in a former motel at [show location on an interactive map] 39°06'53?N 76°46'29?W? / ?39.1148, -76.7748Coordinates: [show location on an interactive map] 39°06'53?N 76°46'29?W? / ?39.1148, -76.7748, adjacent to NSA Headquarters, Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, the museum collection contains thousands of artifacts, including a WW II German Enigma machine and a bombe used to break it, and displays covering the history of American cryptology and of the people, machines, techniques and locations concerned.
Initially housing NSA artifacts for viewing by employees, the museum quickly developed into a unique collection of US cryptologic history. The museum opened to the public on December 16, 1993.
The museum hosts approximately 50,000 visitors annually from all over the world, and gives tours for students and children to teach cryptology’s impact on history and the possibility of employment in the field.
Adjacent to the museum is the National Vigilance Park, where three aircraft, used in reconnaissance, are on display. The US Army Seminole RU-8D Reconnaissance Plane represents the Army Airborne Signals Intelligence contribution in the Vietnam War, and a Hercules C-130 transport, modified to look like a reconnaissance-configuration C-130A, memorializes a US Air Force aircraft shot down over Soviet Armenia during the Cold War. Finally, the park contains a US Navy Skywarrior EA-3B, commemorating a mission in the Mediterranean on January 25, 1987 in which all seven crew died.
The museum and park are open to the public and admission is free.
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
- Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
- Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].
