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WW2 Codebreakers to Be Recognized with Plaque In St. Paul

Catwell

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Codebreakers during the war. (via Wikicommons)

On June 15th, St. Paul, Minnesota, expects to be recognized as an origin of modern computer technology thanks to WWII codebreakers. The group called the Engineering Research Associates (ERA), lasted six years in St. Paul and contributed to electronic communication, computer technology, and the medical device industry around the world. This group consisted of engineers, physicists, and mathematicians who decrypted Japanese and German electronic communications. Founding the ERA allowed computer technology entrepreneurs to grow their businesses into nationally accepted corporations.

When the war ended, St.Paul-based Northwest Airlines director John Parker helped collect funds to form the ERA in 1946. Parker served as president of this group and brought in important people from the codebreakers. The ERA also helped establish tech firms, including Cray Research, Unisys, and Control Data. Remington Rand bought ERA in 1952, merging it with Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation to establish Remington Rand UNIVAC.

In 1956, Remington Rand UNIVAC was bought by Sperry Corporation and renamed Sperry Rand. Then, Sperry merged with Burroughs Corporation, forming Unisys, an IT firm still operating in Eagan.

In 1957, ERA member William Norris and others founded Control Data, a supercomputer firm. Norris served as the leader of the group, which had Arnold Ryden, Bill Drake, Seymour Cray, and Frank Mullaney. Cray, an ERA member,  established a supercomputer company called Cray Research in 1972 before Howlett Packard acquired the firm. Cray designed the most powerful scientific computers in the world.

Without Control Data and the stock market, Earl Bakken, a Medtronic founder, wouldn't have raised funds in the public market. Bloomington is now the birthplace of four firms that were linked to Control Data. They include suffragette company Ceridian, semiconductor and technology company SkyWater, semiconductor manufacturer Polatlr Semiconductor, and Seagate.

If you want to see more about how the war was won following these people's work... See the movie The Imitation Game from 2014. It follows how Alan Turing created what would be the first computer of sorts. Codebreakers had a hard time catching up to changing codes... Alan Turing figured out how. It's quite amazing.

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  • in reply to Andrew J

    I saw a documentary about it not so long ago but can't recall which one it was now. I know that it was originally part of the Manchester Baby project, but I think the documentary was showing it in use with another machine.

  • in reply to Andrew J

    "...CRTs as RAM anyone?..."

    Sounds like a job for a Williams-Kilburn tube  ?

  • There’s a lot in The Imitation Game that isn’t correct.  That’s fine, it’s a movie designed to entertain and the actual story would have made for a dull 2 hours!  You can get some idea of the practicalities and realities of breaking Enigma and using the information gleaned from it though.  The Bombe isn’t in any sense a computer, but a fancy circuit tester: when the circuit goes open, there’s an indication of a possible solution to one encrypted message (and thus all messages on that Enigma network for 24 hours - upwards of 70 networks, all using different settings.)  Incidentally, and more in relation to code breaking in the US, when the German submarine fleet moved to  a 4 rotor Enigma, the British developed a 4 drum Bombe machine - an adaptation of the 3 drum machine - but these were mostly built/modified and run by the US Navy who concentrated on Submarine traffic leaving the British to concentrate on other networks.

    Turing and the team at Bletchley were originally using mathematical techniques, building on the work of Polish cryptographers, to break Enigma (which had changed since the Polish first broke it) but this was way too slow to be of use.  Turing did envisage a machine to do this and worked with Harold ‘Doc’ Keene, Chief Engineer at the British Tabulating Machine company in Letchworth who actually built the machine(s) - Turing definitely did not lock himself in a shed and build it!  Also, it required another mathematician, Gordon Welchman, to have the insight that actually made the machine practical and without whom the whole project may well have been abandoned (maybe Turing would have come up with the insight eventually.)

    For a real consideration of the earliest computer (arguable it seems) used for code breaking, see Colossus and the breaking of the German Lorenz cipher, again at Bletchley Park.  That is a truly amazing story of mathematical genius.

    Not taking away from what the US cryptologists did of course, their recognition is well deserved; nor indeed the work of Von Neumann and ENIAC for calculating ballistic trajectories and defining a hardware architecture that has stood the test of time.

    The UK had a not dissimilar trajectory of companies that formed and merged throughout the 50s and 60s, resulting in ICL (as one example). Some of the most interesting stories come from the early pre-standards days (decimal computers and CRTs as RAM anyone?)