NSA Cryptologic Museum

One amazing thing about being unemployed in DC is that when I get interested in something, there's a museum of it and plenty of free time to go. This weekend Casey and I went to the National Cryptologic Museum in Maryland. The museum is free and it has pretty limited hours. The collection is pretty good, but has a lot of replicas and the plaques are a bit hard to parse. It's best to approach it in a credulous way, but I'm pedantic at the best of times and in a museum full of ciphers and puzzles and analysis, I was just dissecting everything. I overheard the docents talking about that a lot.

Some fun things were: a chart of hobo signs, enciphering machines from the 16thc on, military issue personal equipment, and a pair of WWII German Enigma machines that are usable.