American 6813 Division History October 1945 Page 20

Tony Sale's Codes and Ciphers

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tical work. The distribution of the tasks therefore depended for prac-
tical purposes on the labor, machines, techniques and time available.
The fact that there were sometimes several means for arriving at a de-
sired result immediately burdened the workers with the necessity of
having a broad knowledge of all the techniques in both camps as well as an
evaluation and often facility for each of the techniques as applied to a
particular case.


Much praise is definitely deserving to both personnels. The

Testery was headed by Major Tester and consisted mainly of British Army
linguists and ATS. The linguists were divided into breakers, or those
(who) broke and set the second five wheels on a partially deciphered message
that had come from the Newmanry, and the setters who took the break and
worked out the initial settings of the wheels, including the last two.
The ATS did the deciphering, or decoding as it was called, on the spec-
ial machines devised with a typewriter keyboard.


The Newmanry was headed by Dr Newman who now has a chair of

mathematics at Manchester University. The staff consisted of Wrens and
civilian mathematicians. The section was always blessed with the top
mathematical students from Cambridge and Oxford whenever it needed men.
The selections of such high-grade and specialised personnel was one of
the main reasons for the success of the section and should be noted. The
logbooks kept by each shift were mostly mathematical shorthand which would
have meant little to anyone who did not bring with him a full knowledge of
the subject. As a second point to be noted, these men remained in civvies,
independent of the demands of army life, thus having freedom for con-
scientious research and overtime, a deciding factor in favor of original
thought and good work.


Besides the two camps there was also a large staff of enineers

who kept all the machinery in working condition. Most of the statistical
work was done by electronic counters which reqired maintainance and new
gadgets as techniques developed. The construction of the large units was
done at
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