Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
EJ DJ DJ EJ GA VO IE JY NK YV TI VO ZU
To illustrate each of the rules for columns, rows, and diagonals, we choose
certain groupings. For instance, the first pair
EJ
occurs on a diagonal with
TH
as the opposite ends
(
respectively
)
of the diagonal. The
VO
in the sixth grouping
have letters that are in the same column, so we choose the letters
above
them
HE (
respectively
)
. The letters in
NK
, the ninth grouping, are in the same row,
so we choose the letters to the
left
of them
ON (
respectively
)
, and so on to get:
THIS IS THE WHEATSTONE CIPHER,
where the last letter Z is ignored as the filler of the digraph.
In the end, the Playfair cipher was adopted as the British army's field cipher,
so the war oQce kept it a secret. Although Playfair himself did not claim the ci-
pher to be his own invention, it has come to be known as his. The misattribution
has to do with Playfair's unbridled promotion of Wheatstone's cipher, especially
to the British Foreign OQce, where they began to refer to it as Playfair's cipher.
Now it is time to cross back over the Atlantic and resume our analysis of
cryptology in the American colonies.
Samuel Morse and His Code
Samuel Finley Breese Morse (see figure 2.6) was born on April 27, 1791 in
Charlestown, Massachusetts, to Reverend Jedediah Morse and Elizabeth Breese.
Jedediah was also known as the “father of American geography” and was the
author of the first text on the subject,
Geography Made Easy
, published in 1784,
followed by 24 editions.
Samuel got his education in Massachusetts, and graduated from Yale Col-
lege in 1810. After going to England to study painting, he returned in 1815,
becoming a wayfaring portrait painter and settling finally in New York in 1825.
He founded the National Academy of Design and was its first president, from
1826 to 1845. Although Samuel had no formal training in electricity, he came
to the realization that electric current could be used to convey information over
wires.
In 1832, he first conceived of a telegraph and had developed a working model
by 1837, almost simultaneously with Wheatstone, cited above, and his associate
Sir William Cook. Cook and Wheatstone took out a joint patent in 1837 for the
first electric telegraph put in use by the British railway system. By 1838, Samuel
had invented
Morse Code
(as it has come to be known) of dots and dashes as
a convenient method of representing letters for sending telegraphic messages.
In 1854 he was granted patent rights by the U.S. Supreme Court. Moreover,
Morse's method became more popular than the Cook-Wheatstone system, and
eventually by the mid-nineteenth century, Europe had its own version of Morse
code.
In 1844, a telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington was completed,
and the first message sent on May 24 was “What has God wrought!” By 1861,
the United States was linked coast to coast by telegraph. Morse died on April
2, 1872, in New York City.
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