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The National Cryptologic Museum
An anonymous reader writes "The NSA's once small National Cryptologic Museum is bigger and better, with new more immersive exhibits like a reconstruction of a listening post from the Vietnam war. The place seems to be caught between the urge to keep your mouth shut and the pleasure of telling war stories. In time, though, the story notes that the need to tell stories wins out. Has anyone visited lately?"
But they required a password to get in and I didn't have time to crack it.
I was there about a year ago, it's just outside of DC, near my university. Lots of neat stuff, the older stuff is better labeled, but the newer stuff (1980's) is neat to look at, but the NSA doesn't really want to tell you what it does or what it's used for, it's just kind of sitting there because someone doesn't want to throw it out. They've got a giant 2 story data tape library that's set up to randomly swap tapes around, it's pretty cool to look at. I might have to take another trip up there some time. Also, don't forget to get the kid's NSA coloring book they hand out.
My brother was down at Fort Meade working for *cough cough cough* last summer, so when we went down to visit we got a tour of the museum. Really cool stuff down there, it's worth a few hours of your day if you're in the area.
With the stuff they tell you there now, about the 60s and 70s, it's almost unfathomable what they DON'T tell us about what's going on now.
I was there a few years ago and it was worth the trip just to see all the gizmos and read the guestbook. A word of advice...never take a girl there for a date.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
was a museum dedicated to bigfoot and the lock ness monster since I thought it read cryptobiologic museum.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
"Welcome to L4XD739LNZ8367. Please decrypt the gender signs properly before selecting a restroom."
Table-ized A.I.
Those who could say yes have, shall we say, gone on a long vacation.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Let me guess: you are 9.
Table-ized A.I.
I went to the NSA Cryptologic Museum back in 2002 while I was reading Cryptonomicon. Not only did they have Enigma machines, one exhibit had an Enigma out in the open that anyone could experiment with. The exhibits I was most impressed with were the Japanese encryption machines, Jade and Purple. These machines are quite rare and even the machines in these exhibits were incomplete.
SIGSALY was also interesting - I didn't know that voice encryption was possible during WWII.
I also found it amusing that they had a Connection Machines CM5. Sure, the CM 5's blinkin' lights are cool! But it was personally funny to me because my future brother-in-law used to work for Connection Machines and had a hand in their design and consturction. After I got home, I said to him, "Hey Sam, I saw some of your handy work in the NSA's museum".
The volunteers working at the museum were all retired NSA or military intelligence. These guys actually worked with some of the equipment on display and could expertly explain technical details.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
It is located here:
39 7'2.78"N x 7646'7.85"W
Or as a link: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39.118071,-76.76737&z=16&t=h&hl=en
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
It's a neat little museum. Everything there is familiar to people in the field, but it's nice to see the actual hardware.
I would have liked to see hardware from the NSA/IBM foray into cryogenic computing. NSA funded a long effort from 1960 or so to build a 1GHz computer, decades before anybody else. ("I want a thousand megacycle machine! I'll get you the money" - NSA director) IBM developed components that ran in liquid nitrogen. Apparently some special purpose hardware was built using this technology, but not a full-scale computer. The components were too big (each gate required a tiny coil) and ICs won out.
SIGSALY is a reminder of just how hard it was to do anything with WWII electronics. SIGSALY is straightforward; it's a speech encoder and digitizer fed through a one-time key system. The keys were stored on phonograph records, made in pairs and shipped in advance. This was VoIP, version 0.000001. The system thing took 40 racks at each end, and a staff of fifteen at each site to keep it running. The record turntables had to be mechanically synched; there was at that time no memory device suitable for storing even a modest portion of the of key so that the thing could be synchronized electronically. There was no clock sent on the data channel; synchronization was entirely manual. Unclear why they did it that way. The display at NSA is a mockup.
Bletchley Park in the UK is also worth a visit. Go on a weekend when the volunteers show up; the weekday guides don't know much about the technology.
Dude. They'll never figure out my secret agent decoder ring.
Sounds much better, doesn't it?
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
This has to be the most absolutely ignorant and appalling comment I have ever seen posted on any forum I have ever been privy to be a member of. The contents of this post, having not been moded down to absolute lowest levels of "troll", bring me shame even in reading it.
I'm at a complete loss of words at this point and amazed that you, as evolution suggests, still exist. Anything you say at this point in rebuttal should be viewed as derogatory and demeaning (even in future posts).
I would also like to recommend that your account be canceled on this site. Reading your comments causes me and others nothing but negative responses. Your comments instigate and infuriate people in a non-beneficial way. You instigate negative resposes, and further, I believe that is your entire charge. I should only hope that you, one day, will come to realize that race/color/gender/creed has nothing to do with where you are in life. Perhaps if you worked a little harder earlier in life, you might be happier with where you are at.
Speaking as a veteran of TWO services I would also like to say that I've fought for your right to say these asinine comments, and while it might be your right (to be so damned stupid), no one with common sense would agree with your comments.
Use some common sense, and some good judgment. If you're lacking of either, sign up and serve with any one of the people I have. You might learn something.
I had heard that the museum was "small but pretty interesting". That ended up definitely being an under-sell.
The Computer History Museum in Mountain View is cool and all, but the Cryptologic Museum struck me on an entirely different level. Instead of the "Here is how computing evolved" theme of the Mountain View museum, I really felt like this was the "Here is why computation is relevant to communications (and warfare)" counterpart. They display voice and data encryption tools of the last five decades, from STE's and STU-III's back to (as other posters mentioned) the mechanically-synchronized SIGSALY machine that used giant turning vinyl records to encrypt the traffic. There is a handset you can pick up to hear pre-recorded messages representing the voice quality of each system. The oldest were barely intelligible, the newest are (obviously) crystal clear.
The Cray XMP and YMP are impressive, and are in almost flawless condition! Rather than the exhibit at Mountain View, it felt like these machines were just recently taken out of service, and could easily be made operational again. They didn't seem like they'd been cobbled back together or had sat in closets neglected and falling apart for years. The density of some of the components on the Thinking Machines CM-5 memory and processor slices is impressive, and the descriptions of the power and cooling apparatus required (think many kilowatts and lots of Fluorinert) were equally amazing -- truly a testament to what can be done when money isn't much of an object, and a machine's value is measured solely in MIPS or MFLOPS.
There is a three-foot-tall full-relief wooden replica of the Great Seal of the U.S. on the wall, which apparently was a gift from Russian schoolchildren to the U.S. embassador in Moscow. After hanging prominently on the wall for years in the embassador's office in Moscow, in 1952 it was discovered that it contained a resonant cavity eavesdropping bug on the inside that was very difficult to detect with sensing equipment of the time, unless it was activated by radio signal (presumably by Soviet spies) from the outside. I met there three (very proud) tourists of Russian descent who chuckled heartily at that one (and who tried to teach me how to say "Medvedev" properly, thanks!)
As everyone else mentioned, the working Enigma machine was fun to encipher a message to a friend with (they have a pad and pencil for you to use), and the displays on the history of the agency and of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts were well put together. The GRAB II and Poppy ELINT satellites were especially interesting to me, and reminded me of the kind of things a senior class at the USAF Academy might build for a project these days (relics of an era when launch considerations and electronics density actually drove simplicity into designs).
If you're an electronics/history/information assurance/security/aerospace/DC trivia fan, you'll almost certainly enjoy the trip, even if the facility is kind of small and out of the way. While you're in the area, go see the Udvar-Hazy center, too! And don't forget to tip your docents...
I did some Google searches, hoping to find some historical info on NSA's cryogenic computing efforts, and found this, a 2005 plan out of NSA to build a 50-100GHz computer by 2010.
They want faster CPUs, not more CPUs. The commercial world isn't even trying any more. After reading this paper, one can see why. By throwing a few hundred million, and liquid helium, at the problem, they might get a 20x performance gain over commercial microprocessors. The CPU has to run at 4 degrees Kelvin, liquid helium temperature. And it has to be kept at 4K while dissipating about a kilowatt.
The technology is totally nonstandard. The basic components are Rapid Single Flux Quantum devices running at 4K. The logic voltage power voltage is 3-5 mV. Signals are around 200 microvolts. This stuff requires custom semiconductor fabs to make.
Getting data out of the low-temperature zone is a very tough problem, and optical interconnects have to be used. The proposed memory bandwidth is huge: "For example, a particular architecture may require half a million data streams at 50 Gbps each between the superconducting processors and room-temperature SRAM." Developing devices to drive the output data links from the low temperature zone, without causing too much heating in the cold part of the system, is a big part of the problem.
The justification for all this is in Appendix E, and sounds totally bogus. Either there's some desperate need for this technology they don't mention, or it's a boondoggle. There must be something important for which parallelism won't work. It's surprising to see this from NSA, because most signal analysis and crypto problems parallelize well.
Definitely worth the trip, as others are saying.
One thing I wondered about when I was there: SIGABA/ECM was touted by our tour guide as something which still hasn't been broken, even with modern computers. This seemed unlikely to me, especially after realizing how easily Enigma can be bruteforced (given any known plaintext) -- but then I read about Solitaire/Pontifex in Cryptonomicon, and it makes me wonder...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I was there in December. As is my hobby, I took pictures of basically everything in the museum, and then put them on Wikipedia. See the gallery here.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I can brute force the whole plaintext space in, like, 5 seconds. Unless they start creating an arbitrary number of wrong doors leading to distintegration chambers.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Went there a few years ago, before they built the Colossus reconstruction. They were having a military collectors' flea market at the same time. Take the guided tour. There's an Enigma you can try out, and a ham radio club (GB2BP?). It's also fun just walking around the grounds. Just a 1/4 mile walk from the Bletchley railroad station on the Milton Keynes train out of London (sorry, forget which London station you leave from).
Mom worked at Nebraska Avenue during the war, so I'm really getting a kick out of this...
Was there yesterday.
Really neat setup. Easily spent over two hours browsing around this small museum. Mostly on reading about the war stories. They just had a lot of neat stuff.
You could actually encode and decode your own messages with actual ENIGMA machines. They had the actual bombe's that broke it, and tons of other stuff. The people there are also extremely helpful, knowledgeable, and nice. Even if you're just one person, they'll give you a whole tour and answer whatever questions you have. I highly recommend it!
... that in spite of my interest in cryptology, most of my "knowledge" regarding the NSA stems from Dan Brown. Whose Hollywood-style description of how computers work was pretty painful.
Wow, so are you like related to GWB or are just suffering from rectal cranial inversion. I just wanna watch when karma (and not the /. kind) comes along and bites you on the ass like a 300lb african american prison inmate that aint gettin any.
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.- Shelley
. . . the guide hollers "Red Badge!" before you enter every room.
(Sorry - inside joke.)
What?
...or maybe not: no where that I can see does that site have an address.
It says it's located "...NSA Headquarters, Ft. George G. Meade, Maryland" but nothing you can look up.
-Styopa
I was there in '02 or '03 and they had a small library that was open for a few hours every other Saturday. I spent more time sitting on the floor flipping through random WW2 declassified documents than I spent looking at the exhibits. One book was just old photocopies of reports about the german spies during WW2. They were dropped off on the easy coast by u-boat. And since germany couldn't pay them they were given a large quantity of cocaine that they were supposed to sell to fund their activities.
I visited it but if I told you about it I would have to eliminate you.
I'm a BBS orphan in a blogging world.
... never seemed more appropriate.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
I visited a year or so ago. There was a really nice retired govie/docent, and among the many interesting things was a variety of Enigma machines, including one or two that could be played with. It was fun to mess with crypto machines of that era, and see how the drum system inside worked.
It is a bit off the beaten path, but worth a visit if you are in the area.
For extra Maryland local knowledge points, what was the name of the motel that was once in the building now occupied by the Cryptologic Museum?
(Peter Wayner, I'm shocked that you didn't have that in the NYT article. Or did you, and it was edited out?)
- Robin
"Use some common sense, and some good judgment. "
Don't Feed the Trolls.
Went there a few years ago. The enigma machine was cool as was the slave quilt. It also gives you a sense of how spooky the signal corps can be.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I was there maybe a year and a half ago or so, very cool, and they have an AWESOME gift shop. I got a really sweet lenticular NSA logo mousepad -- but I later learned that optical mice don't like to be used on lenticular surfaces. Oh well, it's still cool. They have T-shirts and pens and mugs and all that stuff. The exhibits are really interesting. Very cool place to go.
Walked out my back door and crossed the street to get to work. I was living in on-base housing. And, no, there weren't any dirt roads to the buildings. It's right off a friggin' highway! What was scary was how open Ft. Meade was at the time. We damn near had an episode of "Cops" once when 2 guys robbed a gas station just off-base and ran through our back yard during the "getaway." Helicopters, cop cars, and cops with guns out everywhere in our neighborhood. Made for some interesting late night entertainment. Of course my favorite part of the museum is the 80's section. Could tell you some stories about some of that equipment. On wait, no I can't.
True story:
I was a codebreaker in the Army Security Agency from 71 to 77 and for the last five years worked at NSA. Taught myself programming to help automate some of the analysis I was doing at the time and was fortunate enough to work on some of the incredible hardware they had in the basement then. In 77 I had to decide whether to stay in (and stay poor on Army pay - about 10K/yr then) or get out and do real work, and interviewed with a number of DOD contractors around DC. When I told the interviewer the CDC mainframe model I last programmed, he confidently told me that CDC didn't make that model yet. I managed to convince him they did by describing some of its attributes and got the job, thereby doubling my pay.
The VN listening post exhibit is interesting. Brought back a lot of memories from when I was stationed is SE Asia during the latter part of that war, helping to process the stuff those guys were intercepting. Fascinating work, and if it wasn't for the Carter-era hiring freeze, I'd still be solving those puzzles for a living.
... is here.
All photos CC-licensed (By-SA) so have fun!
I was a 98C(now it's 35N) in the US Army until recently and did a tour for No Such Agency. I remember visiting the museum with my grandparents and getting hassled by the cops when grandpa took some photos of their welcome sign. It was super interesting - the Civil War wing especially. Who knew there was a signals intelligence field or cryptographic enterprise in Lincoln's era?
I remember my trip to the NSA museum. We went in the early 1990's (c 1991). Now, please remember, this was 1) pre-Google 2) at the time when the cold war was not quite over and 3) the NSA was doing a much better job of staying out of the limelight and was rarely required to submit accounts of their actions even to Congress.
Just finding the place required a few _weeks_ of detective work. We called the NSA a few times to get directions (and did we get some interesting questions from our department chair as to why we had to call the NSA in the first place), and the stock response we received was, "We don't have a museum". Very classic for "No Such Agency."
Finally packing the group up and traveling down to Ft Mead, we must have traveled up and down the road for an hour looking for the turn off. I still remember that it was a small unmarked road (not a dirt road) that ran beside a (Shell?) gas station.
Once we got there I seem to remember having to pass though a metal detector, which was very odd for a museum at that time! We then ran into two or three guys wearing dark blue blazers and khakis who inquired as to the purpose of our visit. Too young to be "veteran volunteers" and too old to be minimum wage flunkies, these guys eerily followed us around the entire museum, always hovering within earshot, but always trading off like they were practicing "trailing". The best was having to "sign" the guest log before entering. Now mind you, after the trouble to get there, the less than hospitable welcome, a minor grilling as to the purpose of our visit, we sure as in hell we're signing our real names!
I suppose that the museum branch of the NSA has mellowed in the intervening years. At least I hope so, I fear that under President Bush, a trip there today could involve some waterboarding so that they could elicit the "true" reason for your visit....
I was there and every piece of "NSA" branded shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, etc. was made in China.
I was the president of the university UNIX User's Group in Harrisonburg (about 2 hours away) and we decided to go as a "field trip". For a bunch of UNIX nerds, let me tell you, the NSA Crypto Museum is a religious experience. It was probably the most excited some of us had been in years. The people there were *awesome*; you could tell they were genuinely happy to have a bunch of "kids" that were super-excited to be there. I had my picture taken with the working Enigma (replica?) they have on display. Using it, standing next to it, hugging it. A good friend of mine got his picture taken while "licking" the Cray. There was a older man in full uniform volunteering..he followed us around and laughed like crazy.
I have to imagine that a large number of people go there because it's "Something to do" or because one guy in the family read Cryptonomicon recently. When I told the guy we'd driven for 4 hours *just* for the Crypto Museum he got this look of wonder in his eye. It was a fantastic experience; take a group of friends that really like those sort of things because there's a *lot* of "boring stuff" if you don't. Mock-ups of Vietnam listening posts, a history of the Enigma cracking project...beautiful.
The Dirt road refered to is US Route 32, and in the 50s was a private, unmarked dirt and later paved military road. Untill the Puzzle Palace was released no one knew where the place was. Afterwords they put up signs.
I have a few. Rosenberg notebooks, enigma machine, Supercomputers.
Hi Steve!
I'm sorry. 100Ghz? You ever hear of speed limits? There's an important one, and 100Ghz kind of fucks you. Unless your processor is 486-like in quality. Even then... I'm skeptical. 100Ghz gives you only millimeters of traversal time.
If you get a chance to visit the National Cryptologic Museum, give the Historical Electronics Museum a visit. It is closer to the Baltimore-Washington International (BWI) airport and about 15 - 20 minutes from the NCM. If the NCM is a 10 on a 1 to 10 GEEK scale then the HEM is a 9.
100Ghz gives you only millimeters of traversal time.
That's right. The proposed CPUs are 2mm across.
Great cryptologic resources, i wish i could go there :(
Anjar Priandoyo securityprocedure.com
I lived the Washington, D. C. area forty to fifty years ago. At one time the CIA was located in an old beer brewery building downtown. Later they moved out of town and while I can't remember the name of the road, the entrance was in fact marked as a maintenance road. "Everybody" knew what the road really was. Years later there were newspaper articles about it and how the location was selected so no one had a clear view of any windows. In those days much was "security by obscurity".
Nothing clever