Cryptography

Timeline of cryptography through the middle ages:

• 600BCE - Aneis dedicates chapter 31 of Poliorketika to the use of secret messages. [1]
• 400BCE - Lysander references the use of the scytale, an early transposition cipher tool. [2]
• 200BCE - Polybius describes the structure and use of the 'Polybius' square
• 100BCE - Caesar employs the 'Caesar Cipher' a substitution cipher where the letters in a message are replaced by the letters three spaces forward from the original letter. A becomes D, for example.
• 1250CE - Roger Bacon writes extensively on the use of ciphers in communicating with divine entities.
• 1379CE - Gabriel de Lavinde of Parma writes the first known pamphlet on substitution ciphers where letters are substituted with various symbols
• 1393CE - Chaucer includes ciphers in The Equatorie of the Planetis
• 1467 - Leon Battista Alberti (The father of western cryptography) publishes Di Cifers which includes extensive frequency analysis tables as well as the first known implementation of a polyalphabetic cipher and the cipher wheel device
• 1474 - Cicco Simonetta issues an instructional pamphlet on the practical use and decoding of ciphers 'Rules for Decrypting Enciphered Documents Without a Key'.
• 1518 - Trithemius publishes Polygraphia, the first complete western work dedicated to the topic of cryptography
• 1563 - Porta publishes 'Firtivis Literarum' a comprehensive review of cryptography, cryptology, cryptoanalysis.
• 1605 - Francis Bacon publishes The Advancement of Learning in which he discusses several ciphers including the 'Biliteral', using two alphabets, cipher which is the first known instance of a binary code.

References

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