Elizebeth Friedman - Riverbank Laboratories

Riverbank Laboratories

The librarian who conducted the interview on her first day is credited with having made a phone call to Colonel George Fabyan that would change the then Miss Smith's life forever.

The librarian conveyed in her telephone conversation Smith's love for Shakespeare, among other things. Colonel Fabyan, a wealthy textile merchant, soon met Miss Smith, and they discussed what life would be like at Riverbank, Fabyan's great estate located in Geneva, Illinois. He told her that she would assist a Boston woman, Elizabeth Wells Gallup and her sister with Gallup's attempt to prove that Sir Francis Bacon had written Shakespeare's plays and sonnets by decrypting enciphered messages that were supposed to have been contained within the plays and poems.

At Riverbank Miss Smith joined a versatile and distinguished staff. There were typists, translators, a graduate student in genetics, and professionals specializing in acoustics, engineering. Riverbank was one of the first such facilities in the US to seriously study cryptography and other subjects. Through the work of the Friedmans, much historical information on secret writing was gathered. Until the World War I creation of MI8, the Army's Cipher Bureau, Riverbank was the only facility in the US seriously capable of solving enciphered messages. Military cryptography had been officially deemphasized after the Civil War. During World War I, several US Government departments asked Riverbank Labs for help or sent personnel for training. Among those was Agnes Meyer Driscoll who came on behalf of the Navy.

Among the staff of fifteen at Riverbank was the man Miss Smith would marry in May 1917: William F. Friedman. The newlyweds worked together for the next four years or so in the only significant cryptographic facility in the country, save Herbert Yardley's 'Black Chamber'. In 1921 Mr. and Mrs. Friedman left Riverbank to work for the War Department in Washington, D.C.