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Jennifer Wilcox: Sharing the Burden - Women in Cryptology

February 24, 2024, 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Virtual meeting via Zoom

Women played a large, but rarely told, role in WWll cryptology. College women were recruited from math departments at colleges around the country to learn cryptanalysis. Thousands of other women joining the Army and Navy were assigned to code work operating machines that broke enemy codes or transmitting coded messages to Washington.


This is their story, as presented by Jennifer Wilcox, National Cryptologic Museum.

Click on image for a much larger version.

The National Cryptologic Museum is one of the hidden gems of the DC area. Located in the former Colony Seven Motel, just outside the gates of Fort Meade, it is a free museum with exhibits covering the entire history of codes and code breaking, from ancient times to the present, with a wide assortment of artifacts inside the museum as well as several aircraft outside that were used to gather signals intelligence. The history of modern cryptology is closely tied to the history of electronic computing, and microcomputers.

The National Cryptologic Museum on Google Maps

National Cryptologic Museum website: https://www.nsa.gov/museum/

This Enigma machine and many variants were used by Germany throughout World War II to send encrypted military and diplomatic messages. Cracking such coded messages was a critical step in the Allied victory over the Axis in Europe. Photo by Lawrence I. Charters, taken at the National Cryptologic Museum. Click on the image for a larger version.

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