How more than 10,000 women worked with the U.S. military to help end the war
One chilly afternoon in November 1941, Ann White found an odd letter in her mailbox from an astronomy professor who wanted to meet. White, who was studying German at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, soon discovered that the professor had just two questions: Do you like crossword puzzles? And, are you engaged to be married?
These same two questions were asked of women across the United States. If the answer to the first was yes and the second no, the women were offered the chance to train for a secret career: breaking codes for the United States Army or Navy.
Read more: https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-women-codebreakers-of-world-war-ii
Another excellent read on the same subject
https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/wwii/sharing_the_burden.pdf
Yup! "Computer" used to be a job description. And at the time we "bruteforced" symmetric keys. Wild stuff.
This is a great story that defines the age and introduction of programming languages
The story is illustrated well in this movie
view on youtu.beThe Hut 6 Story is also quite good which describes parts of how the female code-breakers interfaced with the rest of the apparatus.
Amazing history, written by the winners! Much respect
Reading a Smithsonian map book about this war and learning some very interesting things.
Add this cool fact to my accumulation of knowledge about this war
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Really neat museum if you get the chance to visit!