Dayton Codebreakers Home Page

Dayton Codebreakers
-- the Video --

Broadcast on American Public Television extended 2006-2014!

Look for DVDs available
at these places
Now including the
Nat'l Museum
of the US Air Force

Cheers to Aileen!

Talented Dayton Codebreakers producer Aileen LeBlanc was recognized at the Ohio AP Broadcasters luncheon in Columbus June 6. Included among her awards were Best Documentary or Series, awarded to Aileen and 3 others for “My House: Facing the Mortgage Crisis.” Judges called this series, “Amazing.” She also won First Place in "Best Enterprise Reporting" for "The Small Print of Plastic."

WYSO produced its award-winning series, “Facing the Mortage Crisis,” with a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in collaboration with Think-TV of Dayton. LeBlanc acted as series editor for WYSO and produced feature spots for ThinkTV as well.

Over 5000 visitors
this year so far!

This mission of this site is to tell the story of hundreds of people who worked at the United States Naval Computing Machine Laboratory, a top secret project in Dayton during World War Two. These people kept their secret for over fifty years.

This site is maintained in Dayton, Ohio by Deborah (Desch) Anderson; additional contributions have been made through the generosity of Dayton History, especially the Archive Center at Dayton History, and the internet service provider Donet.

I am grateful to the Archive Center and to the Wenger Command Display in Pensacola, Florida and the many veterans--WAVES and sailors-- who have been so generous over the years for a share of the photographs presented here.

Thanks for learning about a part of Dayton's, and the nation's, history.

The story of the Dayton code breakers survived 50 years of secrecy in part because it woven with so many threads of world history -- military, diplomatic, technological, scientific. I emphasize technological facts and personal stories on this site but I think it's important to mention that the equipment designed here was part of the dawn of the age of information, and that so many of today's headlines deal with issues originating 60 years ago.

I hope the new section in the right hand margin with links to these headlines, opinions, and personal stories will complement the core of the web site.

Donet

Wonder what else is here?
Try the Sitemap

Lost? You are at

In the News

Pro or con, worth your consideration: Top Secret America

2 July: New Scientist online report states the group communicated by posting images encoded with secret messages to public websites, a modern twist on an ancient practice known as steganography. Read more...

5 June: the Bletchley Park Trust announced that, thanks to help from electronics giant Hewlett-Packard millions of documents that comprise that famous codebreaking center’s WW2 archives will be put online. Read more at the Nat.l Cryptologic Museum Foundation's web news

Raise a smartphone to Alan Turing

Bletchley Park mansion will get much needed repairs. CNN.

"Gordon Brown: I'm proud to say sorry to a real war hero", Britain, 10 Sept 2009. Read the news story from the Telegraph and Guardian

15 July: Quantum mechanics enables location-based cryptography--doesn't need keyes, and prevents eavesdropping. Read more in CWI

NY Times book review -- Hello, Robot --history of the vocoder

I wish I had found this gem sooner: Today's Document from the National Archives

Desch the computer

Home :: Contact Info

Frequent additions and updates make for human error--please report any broken links or other problems to Deborah Anderson, site manager--your help is appreciated.

E-mails to Deborah Anderson, in care of Dayton Codebreakers, are still appreciated, and I will try to respond promptly. Anyone who wrote to me from late March to late June, 2010, should know their correspondence was lost due to a hard drive failure that took those two months of data to the great black void in cyberspace (and my forgetting to back up data). If we were working to find data on a family member, or to trace a story, please do not hesitate to contact me again. Your messages are what make this job worthwhile.

Use of materials by permission. Materials other than those clearly marked as National Archives materials are not in the public domain. More information here.

Latest update July 7, 2010