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  Report: Cryptography

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~ 1900 BC: Egyptian writers use non-standard Hieroglyphs in inscriptions of a royal tomb; supposedly this is not the first but the first documented example of written cryptography

1500 an enciphered formula for the production of pottery is done in Mesopotamia

parts of the Hebrew writing of Jeremiah's words are written down in "atbash", which is nothing else than a reverse alphabet and one of the first famous methods of enciphering

4th century Aeneas Tacticus invents a form of beacons, by introducing a sort of water-clock

487 the Spartans introduce the so called "skytale" for sending short secret messages to and from the battle field

170 Polybius develops a system to convert letters into numerical characters, an invention called the Polybius Chequerboard.

50-60 Julius Caesar develops an enciphering method, later called the Caesar Cipher, shifting each letter of the alphabet an amount which is fixed before. Like atbash this is a monoalphabetic substitution.




browse Report:
Cryptography
-3   Abstract
-2   Introduction
-1   Timeline Cryptography - Introduction
0   Timeline BC
+1   Timeline 00 - 1600 AD
+2   Timeline 1600 - 1900 AD
+3   Timeline 1900-1970 AD
     ...
Epilogue
 INDEX CARD     RESEARCH MATRIX 
Polybius
Polybius was one of the greatest historians of the ancient Greek. he lived from 200-118 BC. see: Polybius Checkerboard.