THE
SCIENCE
OF
CRYPTOGRAPHY
What is Cryptography?
Cryptography is the science of secure communications,
formed from the Greek words kryptós meaning "hidden"
and lógos, meaning "word." The first recorded use of cryptography
was by the Spartans who as early as 400 BC employed a cipher device called a
scytale to send secret communications between military
commanders. The scytale consisted of a tapered baton around which was wrapped
a piece of parchment inscribed with the message. Once unwrapped the parchment
appeared to contain an incomprehensible set of letters; however when wrapped
around another baton of identical size the original text appears.
Cryptographers developed more and more ingenious systems,
but it was in the 20th Century that the science of cryptography took
off. The first major achievement was the development of rotor cipher machines.
An American, Edward Hebern recognized that by hardwiring alphabetic substitution in
the connections from one side of an electrical rotor to those on the other side and
cascading a collection of such rotors, alphabetic substitutions of almost any
complexity could be produced. German engineers independently discovered the rotor
concept and designed the precursors to the most famous cipher machine in history
– the German Enigma machine which was used during World War II. The cracking
of the Enigma ciphers by British and Polish cryptanalysts is one of the
greatest triumphs in the history of cryptography and played an important role in
the Allied victory.
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