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Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War

52 pointsby jnordtoday at 5:09 AM12 commentsview on HN

Comments

nxobjecttoday at 7:14 AM

As the article belatedly mentions, the ~40 GB automated tape library for HARVEST was the bee's knees... and possibly the inspiration for "harvest now, encrypt later".

PS – Primary sources for the IBM 7950/HARVEST on Bitsavers, excellent as always:

https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/7950/

show 1 reply
zkmontoday at 7:08 AM

What happened to IBM?

ablationtoday at 7:10 AM

That one job was to process "sensitive" intelligence intercepts and break codes, if you're not grabbed by the clickbait headline. It's a good read.

Devin3162today at 11:25 AM

[dead]