High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The National Security Agency took over responsibility for all U.S. Government encryption systems when it was formed in 1952. The technical details of most NSA-approved systems are still classified, but much more about its early systems has become known and its most modern systems share at least some features with commercial products.Rotor machines from the 1940s and 1950s were mechanical marvels. The first generation electronic systems were quirky devices with cantankerous punch card readers for loading keys and failure-prone, tricky-to-maintain vacuum tube circuitry. Late 20th century systems are just black boxes, often literally. In fact they are called blackers in NSA parlance because they convert classified signals (red) into unclassified signals (black).