3rd cent. Leiden papyrus: medical information gets enciphered to stop abuses
8th cent. - Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Khalil ibn Ahmad ibn 'Amr ibn Tammam al Farahidi al-Zadi al Yahmadi finds the solution for a Greek cryptogram by first of all finding out the plaintext behind the encryption, a method which never got out of date. Afterwards he writes a book on cryptography.
- cipher alphabets for magicians are published
1250 the English monk Roger Bacon writes cipher-descriptions. At that time the art of enciphering was a popular game in monasteries
1379 Gabrieli di Lavinde develops the nomenclature-code for Clement VII (114); a code-system made out of ciphers and codes, which kept being irreplaceable until the 19th century
1392 (probably) the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer writes the book The Equatorie of the Planetis, which contains several passages in ciphers made out of letters, digits and symbols
1412 for the first time ciphers including different substitutions for each letter are developed (in Arabic)
~1467 invention of the "Captain Midnight Decoder Badge", the first polyalphabetic cipher (disk); the inventor, Leon Battista Alberti, also called the father of Western cryptography, uses his disk for enciphering and deciphering at the same time
15th/16th century nearly every state, especially England and France, has people working on en- and deciphering for them
1518 the first printed book on cryptology is written by the German monk Johannes Trithemius. He also changes the form of polyalphabetic cipher from disks into rectangulars
1533 the idea to take a pass-phrase as the key for polyalphabetic cipher is realized by Giovan Batista Belaso
1563 Giovanni Battista Porta suggests to use synonyms and misspellings to irritate cryptoanalysts
1585 Blaise de Vigenère has the idea to use former plaintexts or ciphertexts as new keys; he invents the
1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded for the attempt to organize the murder of Queen Elisabeth I., whose agents find out about Mary's plans with the help of decryption
1588 the first book in shorthand is published
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some essential definitions in the field of cryptography are:
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"Few false ideas have more firmly gripped the minds of so many intelligent men than the one that, if they just tried, they could invent a cipher that no one could break." (David Kahn)
The variants of encryption systems are endless.
For deciphering there exists always the same game of trial and error (first guessing the encryption method, then the code). A help to do so is pruning. Once, after a more or less long or short period a code/cipher breaks. Monoalphabetic ciphers can be broken easily and of course are no longer used today but for games.
for further information on codes and ciphers etc. see:
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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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David Kahn can be considered one of the most important historians on cryptography. His book The Codebreakers. The comprehensive history of secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet, written in 1996 is supposed to be the most important work on the history of cryptography.
also called "the study of code". It includes both, cryptography and cryptoanalysis
to put the ciphers/codes back into the plaintext
Friedman is considered the father of U.S.-American cryptoanalysis - he also was the one to start using this term.