Monte Sala's Cryptographic Achievements

Abstract

This article sets out the principal achievements of an Italian-born Australian inventor, Monte Sala, who exhibited an ability to solve complex electronic problems and to design and build world-class devices. His career spanned radio and TV, NASA space tracking, vision research experiments, telemetry, Pay-TV, and cyrptography, all the time designing, developing, manufacturing, and promoting electronic devices of all kinds. He established a fledgling electronics industry in Western Australia (for which he was awarded the Order of Australia), and his career reached its climax with the invention of devices for encrypting data on communications lines—these were sold worldwide, despite some high-level opposition, culminating in adoption by SWIFT, the international bank clearinghouse.