Housed in a former motel is the National Cryptology Museum. It's right next door to the National Security Agency (NSA) which used to be so cloaked in secret that even folks that worked there wouldn't admit to it. Now it's such a large employer and a huge campus it's well known what it is but not known really what they do there.
Vantage House, where I live, had a trip there with a docent led tour.
Staff from NSA have to be reminded not to be "loose lips".
Once the docent explained what a cipher was he took as to the Enigma exhibit for a history lesson on how the Nazi cipher was deciphered.
It was good to hear how women were such an integral part in the code breaking. Once the algorithm was figured out, these huge machines called, bombes, could break the coded messages.
A fascinating trip and one we'll likely take again since there was much we didn't touch on in the 2 hours we were there. Like the Navajo code talkers.
