17 Facts About Walter Fricke

Walter Ernst Fricke was a distinguished German professor of theoretical astronomy at the University of Heidelberg.

Walter Fricke's specialty was the production of codes and ciphers, and the security studies of Army systems.

Walter Fricke's father was a carpenter who worked as a miner in the copper-schist mines at Mansfeld.

Walter Fricke attended a high school Stephaneum in Aschersleben and passed the final examination in 1934.

Walter Fricke obtained a scholarship to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, which was arranged with the help of British theoretical cosmologist Dr George C McVittie, which was due to start on 1 October 1939 but had to be cancelled because of the start of World War II in September 1939.

In December 1954, Dr Walter Fricke was made the provisional director of the Astronomical Calculation Institute in Heidelberg.

Walter Fricke served as president of the International Astronomical Union Commissions 4 and 8, and as vice president of the IAU from 1964 to 1967.

Walter Fricke stayed on as Director of the Institute until 30 September 1985, and continued his scientific work until he was hospitalized with cancer in 1987.

Walter Fricke worked specifically to improve the fundamental reference system, a series of measurements of the position and motions of a series of fundamental stars that is important for study of kinematics and dynamics of objects within the Galactic system.

Walter Fricke made significant contributions toward the establishment of the European Southern Observatory in 1962 and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, with its observatory in Calar Alto, Spain.

Walter Fricke later heard from others that cribs were no longer needed.

Walter Fricke stated in his TICOM interview that there were two master decks of 500 cards each, with a trigraph on each card.

Late in the war, the Hollerith machine section moved to Weimar, so Walter Fricke told the printer to make up a set of three-letter slugs of type corresponding to the code groups, which were called Logotypen.

Walter Fricke was told to draw two logos from the mixed batch and place the second one opposite that plain value which was the same as the first.

Walter Fricke went on to design and develop the raster key hand cipher, which was to replace the double playfair cipher.

Walter Fricke found it to be excellent, a very secure and practical hand cipher, but he didn't know if it had been broken, with the English using 40 letters and large number of abbreviations.

Walter Fricke knew that if German forces used the cipher as it was, it soon would be broken because of longer messages.