Customer Reviews

Information and Secrecy : Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex

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Burke deserves terrific credit for detailed research into an untold story about several projects to invent computing machines useful for communications codebreaking and other national defense purposes, during World War II. This story is valuable for computer history and for insights into a little known aspect of U.S. military history. The book is painstakingly documented.

With careful attention to arcane topics, the book is not an easy read and might not appeal to many general readers. It has a narrow focus on several developmental computer projects. However, for those interested in the historical evolution of computing machines and signals intelligence, the book may be rewarding.

Owing to the technological difficulty of these computer development projects and modest resources for them, it is not surprising problems were encountered. Based on this context, the author under-appreciates Vannevar Bush, who was involved in spawning these projects. In a bigger picture, Bush rendered extraordinary service to the United States during World War II, as leader of the National Defense Research Council, which harnessed the inventiveness of civilian scientists in meeting the technological imperatives of the war. Bush was a great inventor and scientific leader. Burke would surely have been helped had Pascal Zachary's fine biography of Bush, Endless Frontier (1997), then been available to him.

Nevertheless, Burke's book represents valuable primary research on computer history and signals intelligence. The author devoted years to researching this book. In so doing, he has rendered highly valuable service to the understanding of history. His book sheds interesting light on the dogged efforts of many Americans involved in cryptological causes and in computer development. This underlying story is intrinsically inspiring and now better revealed.

If you're interested in the evolution of computing in the early days of the U.S. military Cryptanalysis you need to have this book on your shelf. The author is clearly a great researcher. And the book gives tantalizing hints about systems not mentioned anywhere else.

But at least at the time he wrote this book, he was unable to put together a coherent narrative. There are multiple stories being told here - none of them coherently. And I'm not convinced the author actually understood computer architecture or cryptography - a handicap in tackling this subject.

I only wish he could go back and rewrite this.