Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
2.4
Two World Wars
Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels,
it may happily strike out his teeth.
Walter Raleigh (
1552
-
1618
)
English explorer and courtier
— from
The History of the World; Preface
(1614)
On December 12, 1901, Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) (see Figure 2.11) re-
ceived signals from atop a hill in St. John's, Newfoundland across the Atlantic
from Poldhuin Cornwall, England. This great achievement created a worldwide
sensation, the first trans-Atlantic radio message. It marked the beginning of the
era of wireless communication. The next several decades would see an explosion
of development of radio communication, broadcasting, and navigation applica-
tions. For cryptography, however, it presented the problem of ease of intercep-
tion by unintended recipients. However, despite the lack of security, there was
often no alternative to wireless transmission, since it allowed central authorities
to communicate with their armed forces. When the “Great War”, World War I,
broke out in 1914, all the main countries involved in the war were using wireless.
In 1916, the British army suf-
fered losses in the thousands dur-
ing the battle to take Ovillers-
la-Boiselle on the Somme. The
British were eventually successful
in capturing it, but in the en-
emy trenches they found a com-
plete plaintext of their orders to
take the objective! It seems that
a brigade major had read the or-
ders, in plaintext, over a field tele-
phone, despite protests from sub-
ordinates. This flagrant disregard
for the need for secrecy, and there-
fore disregard for the lives that
would be lost, led to the devel-
opment of
trench codes
for field
armies.
In early 1916, the French
began to develop trench codes,
which began as telephone codes,
due to indiscretions such as the
above. General Dubail requested
that trench codes be implemented,
which dictated that in normal
phone conversations, certain words
would be spelled out in code rather
Figure 2.11: Guglielmo Marconi.
The photograph of Marconi is courtesy
of the Library of Congress, Reproduction
no. LC-USZ62-39702, Prints and Pho-
tographs Division, Copyright 1908.
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