BREAKING RULES (AND CODE)

America owes quite a debt to a quaker woman from Indiana that few people have ever heard of. Elizebeth Friedman broke code for the U.S. government for several years, from World War I into the days of prohibition era rum runners, to World War II. Born in Huntington, Indiana, Elizebeth love reading and learning. Her father disapproved of sending her to college, but she offered to pay him back, with interest. She studied Greek, Latin, and German. She worked briefly as a principal at a private school, but left because the job did not satisfy her intellectually.

Elizebeth looked for employment at the Newberry Library in Chicago. She asked to see the library's Shakespeare folio. The librarian noted her interest in Shakespeare and introduced her to George Fabyan, an industrialist who used as well to build an estate where he assembled intelligent individuals, an early think tank. Fabian hired Elizebeth and put her to work with Elizabeth Wells Gallup, a scholar trying to prove Francis Bacon was the true author of works attributed to shakespeare. She met geneticist William Friedman at the think tank and the pair married.

In 1918 William and Elizebeth worked for the War Department, in the Department of Ciphers, the only cryptology facility in the U.S. at the time. After the end of World War I, the pair worked for the Army Signal Corps, decoding messages sent by rum runners to the U.S. during prohibition. Elizebeth decrypted two years worth of messages in a few months, crippling the illegal importation of liquor from islands outside of the U.S. In 1931 the Coast Guard created a code breaking unit with Elizebeth and William in charge. Elizebeth took a break from work, from 1923 to 1925, to have the couple's two children.

William continued his government work, breaking code sent by Nazis to South America, and helped thwart Nazi invasion of the U. S. Elizebeth rejoined William, and the two began to coding messages for the U.S. Navy. The pair used enigma machines and traded intel with Bletchley Park (where is Elizebeth Friedman's Oscar nominated movie?) The work became too much for William and his health began to suffer. The pair retired, and wrote a book stating that Francis Bacon did not write Shakespeare's works. William died in 1969. Elizebeth compiled their work in the years after, dying in 1980. Documents declassified in 2008 revealed the extent of her work. America owes its freedom to a Quaker pacifist Shakespeare scholar who remains largely unknown.

SOURCES :

Angelucci, Ashley "Elizebeth Smith Friedman." National Women's History Museum. 

Elizebeth Friedman. Wikipedia.

FURTHER MEDIA ~

PODCASTS : 

Graham, Beckett / Vollenweider, Susan, hosts. "Elizebeth Smith Friedman." The History Chicks, Episode 129, Wondery, 1 July 2019. 

VIDEOS : 

Elizebeth Saves the Queen Mary. The Codebreaker. American Experience, PBS.