1: PROJECT LIGHTNING
The narrative of the Russian scientists’ trip is drawn from an article entitled “Russian visit to US computers” in ACM Magazine, Volume 2, Issue 11, Nov. 1959. Link here: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=368498.
General background on Soviet Russia’s attitude to computers and that of Josef Stalin was drawn from web research, CIA archives, and aided by passages in From Newspeak to Cyberspeak, a History of Soviet Cybernetics, by Slava Gerovitch, MIT Press, 2002. Professor Gerovitch was also interviewed by email and telephone.
2: SANTA BARBARA SOUND SYSTEM
The activities of the Santa Barbara Sound System were described in detail by Lee Meadows, who kept copies of the relevant newspaper clippings. The key events were also recalled by multiple family members.
3: THE V-12 PROGRAM
The V-12 program is well documented. The specific quote attributed to Vice Admiral Randall Jacobs came from “Navy V-12, Vol. 12.” (Turner Publishing Co., 1996, Henry C. Herge). As is evident from the text, several members of the program who studied with Dudley Buck provided some additional anecdotes and detail regarding their experiences.
4: SEESAW
The account of the incident in the truck in Washington is as told by Glenn Campbell, Dudley Buck’s foster son. Campbell frequently went on unofficial ride-alongs with Buck. Although he was not there on this particular day, he was told of the story by the other officer as well as Buck.
The history of the Mount Vernon Seminary for Women is documented on the George Washington University website: www.library.gwu.edu.
The history of Operation Venona is well documented in The Venona Story, by Robert L. Benson, a web publication for the Center for Cryptologic History based on declassified NSA files.
The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll, by Kevin Wade Johnson, a paper for the Center for Cryptologic History, details the incredible history of the most influential woman codebreaker of her day.
The biography of Howard Campaigne is sourced from an NSA oral history interview, NSA-OH-14-83, https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/oral-history-interviews/assets/files/nsa-oh-14-83-campaigne.pdf.
The biography of Solomon Kullback comes from NSA oral history interview NSA OH-17-82 with Solomon Kullback, conducted by R. D. Farley and H. F. Schorreck on August 26, 1982, declassified December 9, 2008.
The biography of Joseph Eachus is taken mostly from an obituary in The Daily Telegraph, London, December 19, 2003.
Background information on the ENIAC and EDVAC machines and the formation of ERA is taken mostly from History of NSA General-Purpose Electronic Digital Computers by Samuel S. Snyder, 1964, https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/nsa-early-computer-history/assets/files/6586784-history-of-nsa-general-purpose-electronic-digital-computers.pdf.
5: OPERATION RUSTY
Reinhard Gehlen’s story is well documented. The CIA’s online archives on Gehlen are extensive. In particular, the declassified account by the officer who orchestrated his switching of sides in 1945: “Report of Initial Contacts with General Gehlen’s Organisation,” by John R. Boker, 1 May 1952, Part I.
While there are many available sources of information on Konrad Zuse, the most comprehensive is the Konrad Zuse Internet Archive, found at www.zuse.zib.de.
Zuse spoke about America’s attempts to secure his services in an oral history interview with the IEEE Center for the History of Electrical Engineering, conducted by Frederik Nebeker, August 28, 1994.
6: PROJECT WHIRLWIND
Jay Forrester’s paper, “Forecast for Military Systems using Electronic Digital Computers,” was declassified on June 8, 1956. It is available on archive.org.
MIT has produced an excellent online archive regarding Project Whirlwind, available at the following link: http://museum.mit.edu/150/21.
The account of the cryptological chaos surrounding the Korean War is taken from American Cryptology during the Cold War; 1945-1989, Book I: The Struggle for Centralization 1945-1960, Thomas R. Johnson, Center for Cryptologic History, NSA, 1995. The specific quote used is found on p.40 of the document, which can be found in the NSA’s online archives—and remains heavily redacted.
Buck’s work on the light gun is recorded in his lab books. External verification of his role in its development was found in the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science Volume 5 by Allen Kent and Harold Lancour, p.396. It reads: “A historical footnote, incidentally, was that Dr. Dudley Buck was the pioneer most responsible for the light gun—the same Dudley Buck who later made such great contributions to micro-miniaturized circuitry and whose death at a young age terminated a career just beginning to blossom.”
Video footage of the Whirlwind computer’s CBS interview with Edward Murrow on December 16, 1951 can be found on YouTube.
7: MEMORY
The story of Glenn Campbell came almost entirely from Glenn himself. While modern readers may feel inclined to be suspicious of the relationship between a young bachelor and a teenage boy, any such doubts are wholly unfounded. As described by Glenn, Dudley saved him from a life of neglect and abuse. He remained extremely grateful for that in his advanced years.
General background on the capabilities of early computers is taken mostly from History of NSA General-Purpose Electronic Digital Computers by Samuel S. Snyder, 1964, https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/nsa-early-computer-history/assets/files/6586784-history-of-nsa-general-purpose-electronic-digital-computers.pdf.
The correspondence between James Forrester and Captain J. B. Pearson, deputy director of the Office of Naval Research, was among a bundle of documents released from the MIT archives pertaining to a legal dispute over the magnetic core technology, a theme that is expanded upon later in the book.
8: FORGING BONDS
Biographies of the attendees at the summit in Corona, California, are comprised from an amalgam of Buck’s briefing notes prior to the event and contemporaneous web research.
Similarly, the properties of “heavy water” and deuterium have been outlined based partly on descriptions in Buck’s correspondence—backed up with web research.
9: PROJECT NOMAD
The impact of the Korean War on America’s security services is widely described in multiple declassified files in the CIA archives, and has been commented upon before.
The specific agenda of Yehoshua Bar-Hillel’s 1952 machine translation conference has been posted online by MIT archivists—including papers that were presented at the event, and materials circulated beforehand: http://mt-archive.info/MIT-1952-TOC.htm.
Howard Campaigne’s NSA oral history interview can be found here: https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/oral-history-interviews/assets/files/nsa-oh-14-83-campaigne.pdf.
Other background on Project Nomad is found here: https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/crypto-almanac-50th/assets/files/NSA_Before_Super_Computers.pdf.
The specific figure regarding the $3.25m bill for the project is found on p. 29, History of NSA General-Purpose Electronic Digital Computers by Samuel S. Snyder, 1964.
This book does not attempt to offer a comprehensive history on every computer project in the US during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Snyder, however, did exactly that. Anyone interested in learning more should read his account, which runs to little more than 100 pages.
The discussions regarding Dudley Buck’s contact with Amtorg and his request to travel to Moscow are discoverable in the CIA’s historical archives by searching for “Buck,” and scrolling through several pages. The following links should work: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79-01041A000100020160-6.pdf; https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79S01057A000500070019-1.pdf.
10: TWO SMALL WIRES
The description of the discovery of superconductors and their properties was detailed in Buck’s lab notebooks and have been fact-checked against contemporary sources.
11: THE CRYOTRON
David Brock has written an article for IEEE Spectrum magazine previously detailing the NSA’s attempts to build superconducting computers, and establishing the chain of discoveries that leads from Dudley Buck to the present day: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/will-the-nsa-finally-build-its-superconducting-spy-computer.
The following slides prepared by MIT also chart the evolution of the cryotron: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-763-applied-superconductivity-fall-2005/lecture-notes/lecture15.pdf.
12: LAB RATS
The original 1956 press release from MIT about the creation of the cryotron was found in Dudley’s files. The university frequently lists Prof. Dudley Allen Buck in articles about its greatest alumni.
The December 1988 edition of the university’s RLE Currents newsletter provides a summary of Buck’s work and refers to some of the papers that have been used in the research of this book: http://www.rle.mit.edu/media/currents/2-1.pdf.
13: THE MISSILE GAP
The description of the incident at Kapustin Yar comes from pp. 280-1 Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, William Taubman.
The portrayal of Von Braun’s complaints about isolation is consistent across multiple accounts. The specific point about Hamill instructing Von Braun to avoid mingling with Americans comes from Wernher Von Braun: Rocket Visionary, revised edition 2008, Ray Spangenburg, Diane Kit Moser, Chelsea House Publishers, p.83.
A declassified account of the years-long efforts by the US and UK to gain access to Soviet intelligence and decrypt it is discoverable via the Internet Archive in a document entitled “Joseph McCarthy and the Venona Documents,” authored by Cecil Phillips and Lou Benson. The specific quotes used are taken from this document, although it is not formatted in a manner that facilitates page numbers: https://archive.org/stream/VenonaDOCUMENTSPARTS12/Venona%20-%20DOCUMENTS%20-%20PARTS%201%20_%202-_djvu.txt.
The description of Louis Ridenour’s life and achievements is taken mostly from an article by Dr. W. F. Whitmore in the Spring 1981 edition of Horizons Magazine, an internal Lockheed publication. The achievements of the SCR-584 radar system are well documented. A web page named “The SCR-584 Radar Tribute Page” collating useful sources of information about the device, its design, and deployment, can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20101004010816/http://www.hamhud.net/darts/scr584.html.
Wernher von Braun’s vision of satellites carrying nuclear weapons that could be sent down to earth is well established. The particular quote about the pressing need to reach space first has been widely used by many of his biographers, including Michael Neufeld in Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2017, pp. 221-222.
14: FAME
A file of press cuttings about Dudley’s achievements was stored with his personal effects in Jackie Buck’s attic. The Wall Street Journal article quoted was also in Dudley’s files, even though he was not referenced.
Project Vanguard is explained extensively in the history section of NASA’s website, and appears to be accurately summarized by Wikipedia. References to Dr. Maurice Dubin’s experiment can be found here, for example: https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4215/ch1-3.html.
IBM’s work in superconducting chips is partly detailed in Snyder’s history of NSA computer projects. IBM historians have also documented the company’s involvement in superconducting computers, which is where the accounts of work by Crowe and Garwin is taken from. The particular statistics about switching speeds came from Superconductivity at IBM - a Centennial review: Part I - Superconducting Computer and Device Applications, William Gallagher, p. 3.
15: THE POST-SPUTNIK EFFECT
The account of the Sputnik reaction at a US cocktail reception is taken from NASA historian Roger Launius in his paper “Sputnik and the Origins of the Space Age,” available on the history section of the NASA website: https://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/sputorig.html. The quote attributed to George Reedy, and the general background to the creation of NASA, is also taken from Launius’s paper.
The background regarding the visit of the Russian computer scientists was laid out in the article referred to earlier, “Russian visit to US computers” in ACM Magazine, Volume 2, Issue 11, Nov. 1959.
16: A RECIPROCAL ARRANGEMENT
The account of the arrangements made for the Soviet scientists to come to the US, and their attempts to attend the Eastern Joint Computer Conference, is drawn from “Russian visit to US computers” in ACM Magazine, Volume 2, Issue 11, Nov. 1959.
17: THE MISSILE MEN
Details of the WS117L program and Project Corona have been declassified and extensively reported. The specific analysis of how the project was divided into three was taken partly from “A sheep in wolf’s clothing: the Samos E-5 recoverable satellite (part 1)” by Dwayne Day, The Space Review, July 6, 2009.
18: THE RUSSIANS HAVE LANDED
The account of the Russian scientists’ trip is again drawn from an article entitled “Russian visit to US computers” in ACM Magazine, Volume 2, Issue 11, Nov. 1959.
19: A PACKAGE
Fidel Castro’s 1959 trip to the US was a highly public event. Everything mentioned here is taken from contemporaneous news reports.
20: THE EXTRA PIECES OF THE PUZZLE
Howard Aiken’s quotes are taken from an interview for the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, National Museum of American History, Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977, Howard Aiken interview conducted by Henry Tropp and I. B. Cohen, February 1973.
The CIA paper for the Kennedy commission is entitled “Soviet Use of Assassination and Kidnapping” and was declassified on September 22, 1993. It can be found in the archives section on the CIA website, currently at this address: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol19no3/html/v19i3a01p_0001.htm.
Descriptions of Shelepin’s rogue operations can be found in Khrushchev: the Man and His Era, by William Taubman, pp. 468-470.
The account of the Magnetic Core legal dispute is taken from legal correspondence released by the MIT archives, with additional background information from interviews with individuals who were involved in the case.
The Jan Rajchman interview cited was conducted on October 26, 1970 by Dr. Richard R. Mertz as part of a series for the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, National Museum of American History, Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977: http://amhistory.si.edu/archives/AC0196_rajc701026.pdf.