Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: kitchel@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Sid Kitchel)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Ultra -vs- Magic
Message-ID: <1990Oct5.034317.967@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 5 Oct 90 03:43:17 GMT
References: <1990Oct2.234803.22706@cbnews.att.com> <1990Oct4.012126.10901@cbnews.att.com>
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From: kitchel@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Sid Kitchel)
welty@lewis.crd.ge.com (richard welty) writes:



|From: welty@lewis.crd.ge.com (richard welty)

|In article <1990Oct2.234803.22706@cbnews.att.com>, Jacob Ben-david Zimmerman w|rites: 
|*The difference between 'magic' and 'ultra' information in WWI is as
|*follows:  'Magic' was the information resulting from the cracking of the
|*Japanese Purple code and various other codes, the most important during
|*the war being JN-25.  In essence, the decoded messages themselves were
|*'magic' information, and were tightly guarded.

|the above is essentially correct.

	According to the unofficial history of the NSA, _The Puzzle
Palace_, the term "magic" gained a wider use during WWII. It originally was
used as above to refer to broken JN-25 messages. Later, as the Japanese
military codes were broken, "magic" was used to refer to any broken
messages.
						Former Naval Person,
							--Sid
-- 
Sid Kitchel...............WARNING: allergic to smileys and hearts....
Computer Science Dept.                         kitchel@cs.indiana.edu
Indiana University                              kitchel@iubacs.BITNET
Bloomington, Indiana  47405-4101........................(812)855-9226