Vince Houghton (the new director of the National Security Agency's
National Cryptologic Museum) and his team unveiled what they'd been working on during the COVID 19 pandemic:
a complete overhaul of the aging, 1990s-era museum in Fort Meade, Md...
"These are artifacts that have never been on display before to the public at all," Houghton noted...
Until recently, historians believed many of the artifacts on display at the Cryptologic Museum were lost to history. For Houghton, unearthing old and unique pieces of cryptologic history has been an exceptionally satisfying part of his mission.
That's because the NSA maintains a large warehouse where employees have kept highly classified objects in the hopes that one day those stories could be told. Houghton compared the warehouse, where he and his colleagues spent hours before opening the museum, as "the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark," the 1981 Indiana Jones movie ending in a giant room full of treasure.
"It's floor to ceiling crates that are deteriorating, because they were sent back there in 1945," Houghton said. "To me it was like every day was Christmas, because I'm such a nerd about this stuff."
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