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This is a very rare 1960s computer board that was used by military to encrypt cipher communications and called the TSEC KW-26 system. Notice this board has epoxy coating to prevent salt water mist decay (this board would have been used on a US War ship on their KW-26 machines). The board has two vacuum tubes with tube sleeves that screw down to prevent ship vibrations from loosening tube and notice the massive amount of gold contacts on circuit card. The code name for this machine was ROMULUS and designed in the 1950s by USA, NATO and National Security Agency (NSA) to secure fixed teletype circuit transmissions. The contract to build this machine was originally awarded to Burroughs in 1957 for 1,500 units. The contract was renewed and a few more thousand KW-26 units were made. The machine could transmit or receive encrypted messages. It had an 800 K core memory and over 50 vacuum tubes. The secret to the KW-26 was an encryption algorithm key based on shift registers. This produced a continuous stream of bits that were xored with the five bit Baudot teletype code to produce ciphered text. The initialization key would be changed each day and perhaps every hour in war games. When the USS Pueblo spy ship was captured by North Korea in 1968, several KW-26’s were onboard. Know doubt these machines were dissected to find the US secrets and began the down fall of the KW-26 machine. This card is New Out of Stock (NOS) and contains original packaging. It is a replacement part with Burroughs manufacture date of 1967. It measures 9” x 4”. This truly is a rare treasure that will highlight any collection of cold war computer memorabilia.
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