The Gambler and the Scholars

In May 1917, William and Elizebeth Friedman were asked by the U.S. Army to begin training officers in cryptanalysis and to decrypt intercepted German diplomatic and military communications. In June 1917, Herbert Yardley convinced the new head of the Army’s Military Intelligence Division to create a code and cipher section for the Army with himself as its head. 

These two seminal events were the beg...