Talk:History of cryptography

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Timeline

A rough timeline to be incorporated once it becomes substantial. Those noted with a # are particularly significant for crypto development (this would be useful to the beginner, if perhaps controversial to agree to):

c. 500BCE - Hebrew use of the Atbash cipher (simple shift substitution)
c. 400BCE - Spartan use of scytale (alleged)
c. 400BCE - Herodotus reports use of steganography in reports to Greece from Persia (tatoo on shaved head) 
c. 50 bc - Caesar cipher
#1466 - Leone Battista Alberti invents polyalphabetic cipher, also first known mechanical cipher machine
1518 - Johannes Trithemius' book on cryptology
1553 - Belaso invents Vigenère cipher
1585 - Vigenère's book on ciphers
c 1645 - Wilkins' Mercury (English book on crypto)
c 1750(?) - Swedish count invents very advanced mechanical cipher machine
c 1800 - Thomas Jefferson invents cipher disk machine -- reinvented approx 100 years later by Etienne Bazeries
1809-14 George Scovell's work on Napoleonic ciphers during the Peninsular War
1854 - Wheatstone invents Playfair cipher
#c 1854 - Babbage's method for breaking polyalphabetic ciphers (pub 1863 by Kasiski)
#c 1915(?) - Friedman applies statistics to cryptanalysis (coincidence counting, etc)
1917 - Deciphering of Zimmerman telegram, major cause of US entry into WWI
#1917 - Vernam develops first practical implementation of a teletype cipher; with Mauborgne contribution became one-time pad
1919 - Weimar Germany Foreign Office adopts (a manual) one-time pad for some traffic
1919 - Hebern invents/patents first rotor machine design -- Damm, Scherbius and Koch follow with patents the same year 
c 1924 - MI8 (Yardley, et al) provide breaks of assorted traffic in support of US position at Washington Naval Conference
#1932 - first break of German Army Enigma by Rejewski in Poland
c mid 30's - Friedman/Frank Rowlett invent first versions of what became SIGABA 
1940 - break of Purple by SIS team
##c 1940-45 development of mathematical theory of cryptography by Shannon, also proof of one-time pad unbreakability
1942 - partial break into Dec 41 edition of JN-25 leads to successful ambush at the Battle of Midway
#1942/43 - first programmable digital electronic computer (Colossus) developed to assist in attack on German teleprinter 9Fish) ciphers (eg tunny -- Lorenz machine)
c 1947 - first break into Soviet one-time pad espionage traffic from 41-42
1949 -  Shannon's Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems pub in Bell Labs Technical Journal
1974? - Horst Feistel develops Feistel network block cipher design
#1976 - Diffie and Hellman publish New Directions in Cryptography
#1976 - release of DES/DEA design by NBS
#1978 - first public release of RSA
#1980 - release of PGP by Zimmerman; very high quality crypto for _anyone_ with a computer
1998 - RIPE project releases final report
2001 - adoption of Rijndael as AES by NIST
2002 - NESSIE project releases final report / selections
2003 - CRYPTREC project releases 2003 report / recommendations

J-V made a suggestion of a separate time-line article. I see arguments both ways. Comments? ww 17:46, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Someone else's timeline to compare (but, of course, not to copy) can be found here: Crypto history (http://webhome.idirect.com/~jproc/crypto/crypto_hist.html) — Matt 16:08, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

OK, the timeline's been in beta for long enough ;-) Any objections if I move it to Timeline of cryptography?

Rowlett link

In this talk page, there is a link for Rowlett that doesn't look like a link for the numbering system. I suggest we change it to a not-necessarily-existent dis-ambiguated link, as well as creating a dis-ambiguation page titled Rowlett (disambiguation) for both the numbering system, Rowlett, and the proposed link that is the better link for the word Rowlett above this message to link to. 66.245.67.166 22:44, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Rowlett refers to Frank Rowlett; I've added a disambiguation header at Rowlett. — Matt 23:06, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Stumbled here from peer review

Ever since Ww asked for my thoughts on the Enigma article (I think it was) a few months ago, I've been meaning to come back and provide a little help to you hard-working crypto editors. :-) Anyway, a couple of quick thoughts about this page since it has a lower MRR rating -- I think it needs a lead section, and I'd like to see modern cryptography broken into subsections (you all know what subsections would be appropriate, or at least you'll know better than I do). I think that would improve flow a great deal. I'll try and read it more closely in the next few days and offer some other thoughts if I can. Jwrosenzweig 22:28, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, it's much appreciated! — Matt Crypto 22:39, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)