The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail In the spring of 1919, when the father of American cryptography,
Herbert O.
Yardley, drew up a plan for a permanent State Department codebreaking organization — a "
black chamber — he estimated that a modest $100,000 a year would buy a chief (Yardley) and fifty clerks and cryptanalysts. Yardley rented a three-story building in New York City: on East 38th Street just off Fifth Avenue, he put two dozen people to work under civilian cover—as the
Code Compiling Company. His summary dismissal happened in 1929 at the hand of incoming Secretary of State
Henry Stimson, who closed down the
Cipher Bureau with the
casual observation that "
gentlemen do not read each other's mail". The son of a railroad telegrapher, a man with a lively Jazz Age interest in money, good-looking women, and drinks at five, Yardley not only taught his country how to read other people's mail but wrote two of the enduring American books—the memoir
The American Black Chamber (1931), and
The Education of a Poker Player (1957).
posted by matteo
on Apr 22, 2005 -
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