During the Second World War, Australia was home to a large, secret code-breaking organisation named Central Bureau. The Code-Breakers there cracked the Japanese air force, army, and water transport codes, and in doing so changed the course of the Pacific War.
David Dufty will talk about wartime code-breaking in Australia, describe how Australians built a large and sophisticated intelligence network from scratch, and reveal how the code-breakers played a vital role in the battles of Midway, Milne Bay, the Coral Sea, and in other operations in the Pacific War.
About the speaker
David Dufty is a Canberra-based writer and researcher. He completed a psychology degree with honours at the University of Newcastle, has a PhD in psychology from Macquarie University, and has worked as a statistician and social researcher at the University of Memphis, Newspoll, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
He is the author of How to Build an Android, a non-fiction account of recent developments in robotics and artificial intelligence; and the historical account of Australian wartime code-breaking, The Secret Code-Breakers of Central Bureau: How Australia’s signals-intelligence network helped win the Pacific War.