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About the Book
It's surely weird to connect Al Capone to the Medal of Honor, but the connection's there in front of us. The Prohibition-era rum runners bring us to Elizebeth Smith Friedman who solved Enigma during World War II with pencil and paper. She, in turn, left us a secret in plain sight, on her headstone in Arlington National Cemetery. That secret waited decades for another woman to notice.
Friedman and her husband, William F. Friedman, bring us to the National Security Agency (NSA) and its predecessors. The NSA's needs included Top Secret "Task 13," the first stored-program digital computer. The NSA's role in creating digital computers was not acknowledged until 67 years later in July 2017. It's time we knew!
Ed tells this story from his personal perspective--because he's in it.
About the Author
Edward Barnard has experienced two consecutive 20-year careers in software development. He soldered together his first computer from a handful of resistors, diodes, switches, and lights in 1968 at age 10. He taught himself FORTRAN IV two years later. High school brought BASIC. College introduced ALGOL, assembly language, and Pascal.
His first career was operating system development amongst the wizards of Cray Research. Ed's second 20-year career has been web software development for countless clients, companies, and projects. He enjoys sharing what he's learned along the way through magazine articles, books, and speaking at conferences. He and wife Susan get outdoors when they can to camp the Minnesota winter with no mosquitoes.