Americana & the U.S. • [Extra]Ordinary People

In the Spring of 2010, in his Maryland home I interviewed Mr. Joseph Leifer concerning his work on Abner, America’s first electronic cryptanalytic computer! After describing his work, he gave me his cryptography degree and agency ID photos. I asked him at end of our interview if he might have any physical pieces of Abner? He explained all physical evidence of Abner was ordered destroyed and information on Abner in 2010 was yet classified. Then there was a silence as Mr. Leifer stared into space before adding. “But during Abner’s final days of being dismantled, I concealed some small components in my thermos bottle and secreted these pieces of history home.” “Do you still have them?” I asked excitedly. “They’re somewhere in my basement, mislaid in rooms full of electronic equipment!?”

Before leaving for Ohio, we both briefly searched his stuffed basement in vain. Over next four years, Mr. Leifer had searched for Abner until he’d given up ever finding the historic items. Then one night in 2014, I received a call. Mr. Leifer’s words were like an electric charge through me! “I FOUND ABNER! “

When Joseph Leifer had phoned me in Ohio with those magic words “I FOUND ABNERI”, he hadn’t informed me what and how many Items he had liberated from Abner? After arriving at his Maryland home, he escorted me excitedly to the kitchen and opened an old cigar box on the table. It was full of various items, which as he laid them out on the table I was speechlessly gazing down upon pieces of history beyond my stunned imagination!

Years later I would be visited by a computer historian and collector who had come to see ABNER artifacts. When I opened the box of items on living room rug, the historian dropped to his knees before the box as if it contained the holiest of objects! Hand shaking, he had lifted out one item and had exclaimed. “Serial number is the earliest I’ve ever seen on a Sylvania componenti.” This line reminds me of Joseph Leifer’s parting words. *Place all the computers in the world in a pyramid pile; these Abner components I present to you Jim… would be at the apex of that computer pyramid!”