Timeline 1900-1970 AD 1913 the wheel cipher gets re-invented as a strip 1917 - an AT&T-employee, Gilbert S. Vernam, invents a polyalphabetic cipher machine that works with random-keys 1918 the Germans start using the ADFGVX-system, that later gets later by the French Georges Painvin - Arthur Scherbius patents a ciphering machine and tries to sell it to the German Military, but is rejected 1919 Hugo Alexander Koch invents a rotor cipher machine 1921 the Hebern Electric Code, a company producing electro-mechanical cipher machines, is founded 1923 Arthur Scherbius founds an enterprise to construct and finally sell his late 1920's/30's more and more it is criminals who use cryptology for their purposes (e.g. for smuggling). Elizabeth Smith Friedman deciphers the codes of rum-smugglers during prohibition regularly 1929 Lester S. Hill publishes his book Cryptography in an Algebraic Alphabet, which contains enciphered parts 1933-1945 the Germans make the Enigma machine its cryptographic main-tool, which is broken by the Poles Marian Rejewski, Gordon Welchman and Alan Turing's team at Bletchley Park in England in 1939 1937 the Japanese invent their so called Purple machine with the help of Herbert O. Yardley. The machine works with telephone stepping relays. It is broken by a team of 1930's the Sigaba machine is invented in the USA, either by W.F. Friedman or his colleague Frank Rowlett - at the same time the British develop the Typex machine, similar to the German Enigma machine 1943 Colossus, a code breaking computer is put into action at Bletchley Park 1943-1980 the cryptographic Venona Project, done by the NSA, is taking place for a longer period than any other program of that type 1948 Shannon, one of the first modern cryptographers bringing mathematics into cryptography, publishes his book A Communications Theory of Secrecy Systems 1960's the Communications-Electronics Security Group (= CESG) is founded as a section of Government Communications Headquarters (= GCHQ) late 1960's the IBM Watson Research Lab develops the Lucifer cipher 1969 James Ellis develops a system of separate public-keys and private-keys |
|
0 - 1400 A.D. 150 A The Roman smoke signals network consisted of towers within a visible range of each other and had a total length of about 4500 kilometers. It was used for military signaling. For a similar telegraph network in ancient Greece see About 750 In Japan block printing is used for the first time. 868 In China the world's first dated book, the Diamond Sutra, is printed. 1041-1048 In China moveable types made from clay are invented. 1088 The first of the great medieval universities was established in Bologna. At the beginning universities predominantly offered a kind of do-it-yourself publishing service. Books still had to be copied by hand and were so rare that a copy of a widely desired book qualified for being invited to a university. Holding a lecture equaled to reading a book aloud, like a priest read from the Bible during services. Attending a lecture equaled to copy a lecture word by word, so that you had your own copy of a book, thus enabling you to hold a lecture, too. For further details see History of the Idea of a University, |
|
Disney Founded in 1929 Disney primarily engages in child and adult entertainment. Starting with the production of animated motion-picture cartoons in the late 1940s Disney began to make also nature documentaries and live-action motion pictures, as well as short cartoons and live-action programs for television. In 1955 the company opened Disneyland, which was their first amusement park. Further openings of amusement parks in the U.S. and Europe followed. In 1996 Disney acquired Capital Cities/ABC Inc., which owned the ABC television network. |
|
Extract of Disney’s Content Production and Distribution Holdings Although the traditional media companies first steps into the digital sphere were fairly clumsy, they have quickly learned from their mistakes and continued to enlarge their Internet presence. During the last years many of the smaller players in the field of digital media have been driven out of competition by the huge media conglomerates. This mainly is a result of the advantages that the commercial media giants have over their less powerful counterparts:
Commercial media companies have close and long ties to advertisers, which enables them to seize most of these revenues. |
|
Epilogue As scientists are working hard on a quantum computer and also on quantum cryptography one can imagine that another revolution in the study of encryption has to be expected within the next years. By then today's hardware and software tools will look extraordinary dull. At the moment it is impossible to foresee the effects on cryptography and democratic developments by those means; the best and the worst can be expected at the same time. A certain ration of pessimism and prosecution mania are probably the right mixture of emotions about those tendencies, as the idea of big brother has come into existence long ago. At the same time it will - in part - be a decision of the people to let science work against them or not. Acceleration of data-transmission calls for an acceleration of encryption-methods. And this again falls back on us, on an acceleration of daily life, blurring the private and the public for another time. We live in an intersection, job and private life growing together. Cryptography cannot help us in that case. The privacy in our mind, the virtuality of all private and public lies in the field of democracy, or at least what is - by connection to the Human Rights - regarded as democracy. |
|
Java Applets Java applets are small programs that can be sent along with a Web page to a user. Java applets can perform interactive animations, immediate calculations, or other simple tasks without having to send a user request back to the server. They are written in Java, a platform-independent computer language, which was invented by Source: Whatis.com |
|
Expert system Expert systems are advanced computer programs that mimic the knowledge and reasoning capabilities of an expert in a particular discipline. Their creators strive to clone the expertise of one or several human specialists to develop a tool that can be used by the layman to solve difficult or ambiguous problems. Expert systems differ from conventional computer programs as they combine facts with rules that state relations between the facts to achieve a crude form of reasoning analogous to |
|
George Bush b. June 12, 1924 41st President of the United States. In 1954, George Bush co-founded and became the president of Zapata Offshore Company. By 1964, he became chairman of the Republican Party of Harris County. That same year, he ran for the U.S. Senate, but was defeated in the Democratic landslide. Bush had better luck in the election of 1966, when he became the first Republican ever to represent Houston in Texas. Presidents Nixon and Ford selected Bush for a series of high-profile appointments: Ambassador to the United Nations in 1971, Chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1973, envoy to China in 1974 and Director of Central Intelligence in 1976. When Jimmy Carter was elected President in 1976, he appointed a new Director and George Bush returned to private life. In 1980, Bush made his own run for the Presidency. George Bush sought the Presidency again in 1988, and won the Republican nomination over a large field of candidates. His election that November was a decisive one, though not the landslide he and Reagan had enjoyed in 1984. |
|
News Corporation The News Corporation Ltd., a global media holding company, which governed News Limited (Australia), News International (U.K.), and News America Holdings Inc. (U.S.) was founded by the Australian-born newspaper publisher and media entrepreneur, Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch's corporate interests center on newspaper, magazine, book, and electronic publishing; television broadcasting; and film and video production, principally in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. |
|
Blaise Pascal b. June 19, 1623, Clermont-Ferrand, France d. August 19, 1662, Paris, France French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascal's law of pressure, and propagated a religious doctrine that taught the experience of God through the heart rather than through reason. The establishment of his principle of intuitionism had an impact on such later philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Henri Bergson and also on the Existentialists. |
|
The World Wide Web History Project The ongoing World Wide Web History Project was established to record and publish the history of the World Wide Web and its roots in hypermedia and networking. As primary research methods are used archival research and the analysis of interviews and talks with pioneers of the http://www.webhistory.org/home.html |
|
WTO An international organization designed to supervise and liberalize world trade. The WTO (World Trade Organization) is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was created in 1947 and liberalized the world's trade over the next five decades. The WTO came into being on Jan. 1, 1995, with 104 countries as its founding members. The WTO is charged with policing member countries' adherence to all prior GATT agreements, including those of the last major GATT trade conference, the Uruguay Round (1986-94), at whose conclusion GATT had formally gone out of existence. The WTO is also responsible for negotiating and implementing new trade agreements. The WTO is governed by a Ministerial Conference, which meets every two years; a General Council, which implements the conference's policy decisions and is responsible for day-to-day administration; and a director-general, who is appointed by the Ministerial Conference. The WTO's headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. |
|