Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II

by Liza Mundy

One electrical company asked for twenty female engineers from Goucher, with the added request, “Select beautiful ones for we don’t want them on our hands after the war.”

She was expected to pay her own way to Washington, but she would be paid $1,620 a year, almost double what she had made teaching school.

Code breaking required literacy, numeracy, care, creativity, painstaking attention to detail, a good memory, and a willingness to hazard guesses. It required a tolerance for drudgery and a boundless reserve of energy and optimism. A reliable aptitude test had yet to be developed.

drafting class as Vassar offered—and aspired to be an architect. Her professor was the legendary Grace Hopper, a computing pioneer who became a rear admiral