Parker Hitt

Parker Hitt (  1878 -  January 1971 ) was an American officer and cryptologist .

Life

Towards the end of the 19th century from studying Indianapolis native young Parker Hitt civil engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette ( Indiana ). In 1898, during the Spanish-American War , he joined the US Army . He quickly rose to the rank of infantry officer and was transferred to the Philippines in 1899 .

Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War the then wrote Captain ( captain ) its basic font Manual for the solution of military ciphers ( German  "Handbook for solution military ciphers " ), which was launched internally in 1916 (see PDF below writings ) and for over a century Years was the first American plant of its kind. It is considered to be the basis for the rapid and impressive development of cryptology in the United States in the 20th century .

Encryption cylinder M-94 in the National Cryptological Museum (NCM) of the USA

Just as before the First World War, he had the idea of ​​an encryption cylinder in February 1912. By his colleagues, the then Major (later Major General ) Joseph Mauborgne (1881-1971) refined the design of the cylinder and finally in 1921 the commissioning of the field-grade began cryptosystem M-94  (picture) in the Signal Corps , so the telecommunications force of the US Army . It was used until the Second World War .

Parker Hitt rose during the First World War to the Colonel ( Oberst on). He served in the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF ) , which were sent to Europe after the United States declared war on the German Empire on April 6, 1917 to support the troops of the Entente on the Western Front . There he took care of the replacement of a cryptographically rather weak French encryption system with a significantly stronger American method and supported “his” cryptanalysts in deciphering encrypted German radio messages .

Even after his retirement, he returned to active service in the 1940s during World War II.

The important American cryptologist couple William and Elizebeth Friedman called him the "father of modern American cryptology" ( English father of modern American cryptology ) .

Parker Hitt died in January 1971 at the age of 93.

Posthumous honor

In 2011 he was inducted into the Hall of Honor ( German  "Ehrenhalle" ) of the National Security Agency (NSA) .

Fonts

• Manual for the solution of military ciphers. Press of the Army Service Schools, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1916. PDF; 5.5 MB (English), accessed October 26, 2018.

literature

• Betsy Rohaly Smoot: Pioneers of US Military Cryptology - Colonel Parker Hitt and His Wife, Genevieve Young Hitt. Federal History 2012, pp. 87-100. PDF; 490 kB (English), accessed on October 26, 2018.
• Betsy Rohaly Smoot: Parker Hitt's First Cylinder Device and the Genesis of US Army Cylinder and Strip Devices. Cryptologia 39: 4, 2015, doi: 10.1080 / 01611194.2014.98837 , pp. 315–321.

Web links

• Portrait photo , accessed October 26, 2018.
• Vita NSA , accessed October 26, 2018.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Vita , accessed on October 26, 2018.
2. ^ Fred B. Wrixon: Codes, Ciphers & Other Secret Languages. From the Egyptian hieroglyphs to computer cryptology. Könemann, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-8290-3888-7 , p. 604.
3. ↑ Betsy Rohaly Smoot: Parker Hitt's First Cylinder Device and the Genesis of US Army Cylinder and Strip Devices. Cryptologia 39: 4, 2015, doi: 10.1080 / 01611194.2014.98837 , p. 316.
4. ^ Fred B. Wrixon: Codes, Ciphers & Other Secret Languages. From the Egyptian hieroglyphs to computer cryptology. Könemann, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-8290-3888-7 , p. 247.
5. ^ Vita , accessed on October 26, 2018.