New Supercomputer Named For Pioneer Codebreaker

DAYTON, Ohio
A new Air Force supercomputer is named in honor of an Ohio man who was instrumental in cracking Nazi codes during World War II.

The $2.2 million machine to be used by researchers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton is called the “Desch.“ It will turn large amounts of radar surveillance data into three-dimensional video images that can observe an entire city and focus in close - on an individual lighting a cigarette, for example.

Joe Desch, who died in 1987, was the designer of a computer that helped the Allies break the Nazis’ Enigma codes. Desch’s daughter, Debbie Anderson, planned to attend Monday’s unveiling of the supercomputer and says it would have fascinated her father, and he would have wanted to know exactly how it worked.

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