Parker Hitt's First Cylinder Device and the Genesis of U.S. Army Cylinder and Strip Devices

Abstract

Articles discussing strip and cylinder devices inevitably discuss the role of Parker Hitt in the evolution of the U.S. Army's M-94 cylinder device. Hitt's development of a cylinder has long been attributed to work he did in 1913, based on letters he wrote to William Friedman in 1947. Newly discovered papers reveal that Hitt's first cylinder device was actually built in 1912 in collaboration with other students at the Army Signal School, and uncovers a previously unknown photograph of this early device.

Keywords:

• Army Signal School
• cylinder ciphers
• James G. Taylor
• Joseph O. Mauborgne
• M-138
• M-94
• Parker Hitt
• strip ciphers

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Jonathan Webb Deiss of Soldier Source, whose archival research uncovered the picture of the Hitt cylinder in Signal Corps files and provided the basis for this article. René Stein of the National Cryptologic Museum Library also provided invaluable assistance.

Notes

¹Major General Joseph O. Mauborgne (1881–1971) was an Army expert in both cryptology and radio technology. He served as Chief Signal Officer from 1937 to 1941.

²No reading lists for Hitt's 1911–1912 class at the Signal School survive, but in 1947 Hitt told William Friedman that “I got his (Bazeries’) book and Collon's articles from the War College Library sometime in the fall of 1914 and, for the first time, realized that I had hit on his exact idea” [7]. A. Collon, a Belgian army officer, wrote Etude sur la cryptographie, son emploi a la guerre et dans le diplomatie, a 566-page treatise that William F. Friedman and Charles J.Mendelsohn agreed was one of the best works on the subject of cryptanalysis [9].

³James G. Taylor was born in South Dakota on 16 September, 1878, just a few weeks after Hitt was born in Indiana. His early career parallels Hitt's, for Taylor enlisted in May 1898 to fight in the Spanish-American War and attended the Army Signal School the same year that Hitt did, 1911–1912. Taylor retired in 1922, and little is known about his service after his time at Fort Leavenworth [1].

⁴The Director of the Army Signal School, Major Edgar Russel, forwarded Taylor's paper with Hitt's comments to the Director of the Army Service Schools, to be forwarded to the Chief Signal Officer. Russel did not have the paper published with the proceedings of the Technical Conference because the fact that this method of “enciphering and deciphering messages by means of mechanical devices and a mode of secret writing” would not have value to the Army if it were generally known [6].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Betsy Rohaly Smoot

Betsy Rohaly Smoot is a historian for the National Security Agency's Center for Cryptologic History. She is working on a biography of cryptologic pioneers, Parker and Genevieve Hitt. This work is the author's own and does not reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the National Security Agency, or the Center for Cryptologic History.