DOCID 3575750 U Before Super-Computers NSA And Computer Development U At the time of World War I commercial and government inventors began experimenting with electromechanical machines to encipher and decipher messages By the outbreak of the Second World War all major combatants had adopted sophisticated cipher machines for at least a portion of their communications security programs At the same time Great Britain and the Vnited States partners in cryptanalysis developed machines of increasing power and complexity for solving the cryptosystems of their enemIes U With the knowledge of what machines could make possible in cryptanalysis Army and Navy personnel adapted and adopted devices of increasing power and capacity during the war They leased or built machines for compiling and comparing message texts searching for cribs or seeking statistical coincidences Each machine it seems also had to have a colorful designator -- DRAGON COPPERHEAD RATTLER MAMBA DVENNA MADAME X SVPERSCRITCHER -- that sometimes signified something about its components or its antecedents V None of these machines it should be noted were computers They had no memory and both were hard-wired to perform just one task However near the end of the war the British cryptologic organization developed a device that many consider the first true computer V One sophisticated German machine was TUNNY the Allied codename for it used by the highest level officials In 1943 capitalizing on an error by German code clerks British cryptanalysts solved the system in theory In practice however working individual TVNNY messages required excessive processing time For rapid exploitation of TUNNY British engineers invented a device known as COLOSSVS which had many characteristics now associated with modem computers V By the end of the war V S Army and Navy cryptologists had considerable experience with special-purpose devices this experience made clear to both services that rapid data processing would be vital to American cryptology in the future The challenge was to transfer their hard-won knowledge from special-purpose machines to the design of a general-purpose computer capable of multiple applications V But American research in data processing faced several challenges in the first years after the war Budgets dropped many academicians and technical experts who had entered ppru led for R elease b'i 'JS A or 6-'12-2009 FOI A Cm e # 52561 DOCID 3575750 the military for the duration were now demobilized and the close win the war cooperation between government and industry ended In this period of uncertainty both the Navy and the Army conducted as much inhouse research as possible and contracted as they could with private corporations for development Despite the hope for a general processing machine well into the postwar period most cryptanalytic devices were designed to work only against one particular foreign machine These devices again like their wartime counterparts had colorful codenames -- ALCATRAZ O'MALLEY WARLOCK HECATE SLED · jj 31-PL 86-36 In the summer of 1946 two civilian researcher working for the Navy Dr Howard Campaigne an lattended aconferenc n computing at the University of Pennsylvania Parhclpants compared new academic data pro essors discussed advances in increasing memory and shared ideas on programming languagesl Ireport to the Navy in the fall of 1946 prepared in cooperationwith Dr Campaigne detailed the latest advances in computing and gave examples of how they could be applied in cryptanalysis Samuel Snyder an Army civilian who had been involved with cryptanalytic equipment since the 1930s read thel eport and was inspired to conducthis own investigation into academic and commercial data processing developments His findings influenced the Army to invest in computer research in much the same way th9 ---J report had influenced the Navy U By 1947 both the Army and Navy cryptologic organizations were committed to acquiring general-purpose computers They had however no clear idea which among several competing concepts might work -- if indeed any of them would b 1 b 3 -P L 86-36 C U ITHJ9 By late 1950 the Navy and industry working together producedthe generalpurpose computer ATLAS This machine with a cost ofnearl ktriple predevelopment estimates used 2 700 vacuum tubes and drum memory technology In addition to the Navy's direct input considerable work under was done by Engineering Research Associates ERA which had begun life as one of the Navy's proprietary companies and had many veterans of Navy cryptanalysis in it ATLAS would perform well in support of cryptanalysis for a decade U It is believed that the first operational program written for ATLAS was designed to attack isologs in VENONA messages VENONA was the codename for Soviet World War II espionage communications thepr rarn V s Vritten y 1 lua mathematician whouhadubeenuhired as a Navy civilian in 146 Navy I U Once ATLAS went into operation the Navy's R D team learned to appreciate DOCID 3575750 the capabilities it represented but even more importantly they gained an understanding of its limitations and shortcomings These were the areas in which they would concentrate future research efforts u Whereas the Navy turned to contractors or proprietary firms for computer research and development the Army depended primarily on in-house work Samuel Snyder kept his team kept informed on the latest research at universities and also at the National Bureau of Standards which had its own research program The Army Security Agency engaged in considerable design work for its own computer but had not begun actual production by the time the Armed Forces Security Agency was founded in May 1949 and many cryptologic research functions were consolidated In fact the decision to proceed with production took another year when the Korean War provided the stimulus Since conventional means proved too slow to validate u S encryption tables for wartime use by American forces AFSA authorized in-house production of ASA's computer design The result was ABNER completed in 1952 Like ATLAS the machine incorporated innovative features but had serious limitations and served as an educational device as much as for designers as for the operators The name by the way came from a then-popular comic strip Li'l Abner about a powerfully built country bumpkin b 1 b 3 -P L 86-36 In addition to the needs of its cryptanalysts NSA had another pressing problem to which electronic data processing seemed the only solution Sites around the world were sendin Intercepts to NSA each month in the 1950s conventional machines were not equal to t e task of sorting standardizing and routing this tonnage NSA spent more thanl ollars working with a contractor to develop NOMAD a device that would increase computer memory exponentially to tackle this job However for a variety of reasons including shifting requirements and inadequate monitoring of research the project failed U Learning from these deficiencies subsequent NSA systems incorporated innovati ve input techniques and storage devices -- drum storage then tape drives remote job access and chip technology One computer built in the mid-1950s called SOLO became the first to replace vacuum tubes with transistors Special-purpose computers were designed not only for cryptanalysis but also to generate COMSEC material for protection of u S communications As it became apparent NOMAD was a failure NSA developed a number of specialpurpose devices to perform the data managing and processing NOMAD had been slated to do some of them made in-house some by contractors such as IBM One of the systems nicknamed BOGART which had originally been designed to support NOMAD functions was redesigned to do the whole job BOGART which used solid state technology for the r • DOCID 3575750 first time and took advantage of new tape drives for long-teon data storage operated successfully for close to a decade BOGART also served as the central computer for one of the first remote job entry systems codenamed ROB ROY In the late 1950s the highest government levels called for new approaches in the b 1 UuGf Ypt E1 lxticuattackonl cipher systems President Eisenhower authorized a number i ii i g i of studies ofAriietlcanintelligence in I l ing uuuu SIGINT One of the studies chaired by ex b 3 -P L 86_36 president Herbert Hoover recommended an al1 6ufattackon ciphers similar to the I I project that had developed the atomic bomb Some felt however that NSA was not taking advantage of the latest scientific thinking and advocated the creation of an outside group to research advanced methods of cryptanalysis To help forestall any movement to break NSA apart the DIRNSA General Ralph Canine brought in Howard Engstrom to lead the Agency's research·efforts Engstrom had directed the Navy's wartime cryptanalytic R D and had worked in private industry in the decade since giving him a solid grasp of the problems and possibilities in both worlds As an aside this recommendation for a cryptologic think tank resulted in the creation o Engstrom collated ideas from NSA scientists and cryptanalysts regarding longtenn research into super-fast computers and research intol Icryptosystems These suggestions which called for work both inside and outside the fence coalesced into a proposal that came to be known as Project FREEHAND A subsidiary effort to develop hardware became known as Project LIGHTNING General Canine who in 1956 was facing retirement wanted the plan begun before he left b 3 -P L 86-36 b 1 b 3 -18 usc 798 b 3 -50 usc b 3 -P L 86-36 403 General Canine convinced President Eisenhower's science advisors to support the research outside NSA but in light of failures such as NOMAD they were reluctant to agree to fund in-house work Canine put pressure on NSA's own Science Board to prepare a plan acceptable to the government's highest levels Working their individual high-level contacts General Canine and Howard Engstrom obtained promises of funding for FREEHAND and LIGHTNING Engstrom took the lead in advocating these projects when Ralph Canine retired President Eisenhower approved Project LIGHTNING in a meeting with General John Samford the new DIRNSA giving a powerful boost to the project Engstrom believed that with an adequate budget and a genuine free hand NSA could create a new eneration of su er-fast computers perhaps tripling processing speed at JrQkqn m -18 usc 798 TomanageIIGHTNING he i m oLu i3 03 -i 'i-__ ' '---- ----- - -- 'T ' '--- ---- 'r r-J chose Howard Campaigne the data processmg pIOneer A went to three major contractors for research on the latest technologies with other commercial firms and some universities taking smaller aspects of the overall research plan DOCID 3575750 At this same time LIGHTNING started the IBM Corporation proposed a parallel research track known as HARVEST an outgrowth of work already in progress for NSA and other government customers Although Howard Engstrom -- now NSA's deputy director -- and Sam Snyder another computer pioneer opposed the concept arguing that the technology involved was not as advanced as needed and that funding HARVEST would interfere with Project FREEHAND General Samford approved the proposal HARVEST came in at a higher cost than projected proved to be a difficult system to use and had slower processing speed than planned However NSA personnel wrote innovative programs for it that extended its applications although it never achieved their goal of multiprogramming As with earlier systems its development and use turned out to be good experiences for those who went on to the next generation of equipment HARVEST itself remained in service from 1962 to 1976 a long span of use for a computer system No machine resulted directly from Project FREEHAND But the knowledge gained from the research was applied for years to development of computing systems From the mid-1960s NSA began purchasing commercially developed computers in addition to building its own Agency programmers often wrote specialized software that extended the eryrO Ogie apabili ti es O f COTS systems By the late 1960s it is likely that NSA with about fequipment had the largest collection of advanced computers in the United States and probably in the world b 3 -P L 86-36 SA organized its computers in complexes according to the type of processing performed By the early 1970s the Agency was moving into the era of the supercomputer with the purchase of the CDC 6600 One CDC employee Seymour Cray left to form his own company in 1972 and began designing supercomputers NSA purchased the first eRAY I in 1976 U lvOUO The development of computers for cryptologic applications did not happen smoothly or directly NSA research focused on specific problems and how to solve them not abstract theory and there were many failures and false starts as well as successes However each new machine gave enhanced capabilities to NSA's analysts and excellent learning experience to those involved in research It should also be pointed out that even if NSA's computers did not achieve the Agency's own high goals they frequently were well in advance of data processing equipment anywhere else FOR FURTHER READING U Colin B Burke It Wasn't All MAGIC The Early Struggle to Automate Cryptanalysis 1930s-1960s CCH 2002 ' DOCID 3575750 U Thomas R Johnson American Cryptology in the Cold War CCH 1995-1999 Almanac 50 th Anniversary Series Content Owner Feedback Web POC Feedback Last Modified by nSf Last Reviewed February 28 2003 Next Review 365 days DERI VEIl R l OM N SAl S S f#NUIIL 123-2 DATED 24 A B 1888 DEa ASSI FY ON - 1