From Sixteenth-Century Cryptography to the New Millennium — The Last 500 Years - Codes: The Guide to Secrecy from Ancient to Modern Times - page 106

cryptosystems as if they were an extinct species of dinosaur. The reason is that
the existence of a true quantum computer could not only outperform classical
computers (for instance, breaking RSA since it could factor integers eQciently!),
but also do things that classical computers cannot do, such as generating truly
random numbers! We would even be on the brink of such phenomena as tele-
portation ! We will understand how this has been done already on a subatomic
level. But we will leave this topic for the last chapter of the topic. We have a
lot to learn before we get there.
We now have an overview of our history under our belts, a bird's-eye view
of how we got here crytoplogically. In the next chapter, we begin to learn the
details of all the mechanisms we have talked about to this point. Let us get
started.
Figure 2.23: The Cray XMP
The above image is courtesy of the National Cryptologic Museum. See
http://www.nsa.gov/museum/cray.html where the following caption is given:
“This Cray XMP was donated to the museum by Cray Research, Inc. It de-
notes the newest era of partnership between NSA and the American computer
industry in the employment of computers for cryptologic processes.”