Legal Protection: TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Another important multilateral treaty concerned with The complete TRIPS agreement can be found on: |
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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 |
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Medieval universities and copying of books The first of the great medieval universities was established at 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 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, |
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Writing Writing and calculating came into being at about the same time. The first pictographs carved into clay tablets are used for administrative purposes. As an instrument for the administrative bodies of early empires, who began to rely on the collection, storage, processing and transmission of data, the skill of writing was restricted to a few. Being more or less separated tasks, writing and calculating converge in today's computers. Letters are invented so that we might be able to converse even with the absent, says Saint Augustine. The invention of writing made it possible to transmit and store information. No longer the ear predominates; face-to-face communication becomes more and more obsolete for administration and bureaucracy. Standardization and centralization become the constituents of high culture and vast empires as Sumer and China. |
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