On November 11, 2017 12:24:47 PM EST, John Young <j...@pipeline.com> wrote: >CODE GIRLS >The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II >By Liza Mundy > >https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/books/review/liza-mundy-code-girls-world-war-ii.html > >Describes the experiences of several thousand >American women who spent the war years in >Washington, untangling the clandestine messages >sent by the Japanese and German militaries and >diplomatic corps. At a time when even >well-educated women were not encouraged to have >careers much less compete with men to >demonstrate their mastery of arcane, technical >skills this hiring frenzy represented a >dramatic shift. The same social experiment was >simultaneously unfolding on the other side of the >Atlantic. The British debutantes and their >middle-class peers recruited to work at the >secret Bletchley Park code-breaking operation came to outnumber the >men. > >Mundys narrative turns thrilling as she >chronicles the eureka moments when the women >succeed in cracking codes, relying on a mixture >of mathematical expertise, memorization and occasional leaps of >intuition. ... > >At the end of the war, virtually all of the >female code breakers were given their walking >papers and returned to civilian life. Only a few >superstars were asked to stay on (among them Ann >Caracristi, who went on to become the first >female deputy director of the National Security Agency). > >For these accomplished and resourceful women, who >had been given a heady taste of professional >success, it was jarring to have to fight to be >accepted to top graduate programs on the G.I. >Bill or embark on traditional paths as wives and >mothers. Warned not to reveal their secret >wartime lives, many remained silent about their >valuable service. Thanks to Mundys book, which >deftly conveys both the puzzle-solving >complexities and the emotion and drama of this era, their stories will >live on.
I think they made a movie about this recently, Hidden Figures... Or wait, actually that was about females acting as "computers" for NASA in it's early days. Stuff like project venona in it's early pre-computer days and basically all code breaking before digital computers always seems like a titanic feat when I think about it. Early versions of UNIX had no "more" command because the "terminal" was a fucking piece of paper ;) We are lucky, at least, that we have reasonable computer systems these days, even if everything else is beyond fucked.
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