Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

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Famous People Column – An open Column for all writers

May 6, 2008

Old Timers of Note:

Hart Dowd

His name was Herbert Osborne Yardley, and he founded one of the American government’s very most top-secret agencies: the Black Chamber.  It functioned during the 1920s, deciphering coded messages of interest to those charged with national security.  This was a period of heightening edginess in Washington regarding the military “rising sun” -- Japan.  He was an American cryptologist best know for his book The American Black Chamber (1931).

born April 13, 1889, Worthington, Ind., U.S.
died Aug. 7, 1958, Washington, D.C.

Yardley was born in 1889 in Worthington, Indiana. His mother, Mary Emma Osborn Yardley, died when he was 13. His father, Robert Kirkbride Yardley, was a station master and telegrapher for a railroad.  From him, Herbert learned to use the telegraph. 

After graduating high school in 1907, Yardley worked as a telegrapher for a railroad. He spent his free time learning how to play poker, and applied his winnings towards his further schooling.  In 1912, after passing the civil service exam, he was hired as a government telegrapher.  At 23 he began his career as a code clerk in the State Department. He accepted a Signal Corps Reserve commission and served as a cryptologic officer with the American Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I.

Intrigued by ciphers and curious as to his own ability to crack them, he one day undertook to translate a coded message that came across his desk for President Woodrow Wilson. He did it -- and soon was elevated high above his clerk’s post. International spies and codes proliferated during World War I, and by the time he was 30, Yardley had been made the nation’s chief cryptographer. He carefully studied codes and code breaking in Europe. Based on his unique expertise, he established the so-called Black Chamber in 1919.

During its first year, the agency decoded more than 800 telegrams pertaining to Japan alone. Over the next decade, until its dismantling in 1929, the Black Chamber decoded some 45,000 secret messages in dozens of languages.

He later helped the Nationalists in China break Japanese codes and worked briefly for the Canadian government, helping it set up a cryptological section, (who, for purposes of secrecy, while in Canada, used the name Herbert Osborn).

Code-breaking machines and now computers replaced the early skull work of Yardley and his government colleagues. But he is respectfully remembered, and students of cryptography still refer to Yardley’s books on the subject.

None of Yardley's many later attempts at writing were as successful as The American Black Chamber, though he published several articles, three spy/mystery novels (The Blonde Countess, Red Sun of Nippon, and Crows Are Black Everywhere), and contributed to several movies (including Rendezvous, based very loosely on one of his novels, The Blonde Countess) as a writer and technical advisor. His 1957 book on poker, Education of a Poker Player, which combined poker stories with the math behind the poker strategies, sold well. Another book of cryptographic memoirs, The Chinese Black Chamber (about his work in China), was declassified and published in 1983.

Yardley died at 1:15 p.m. on 7 August 1958, nearly a week after having a major stroke. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Grave 429-1 of Section 30.

Yardley is a member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.

Hartson Dowd

hsdowd@telus.net