60 Years of Cryptography, 1949-2009

Dan Jones writes "2009 marks 60 years since the advent of modern cryptography. It was back in October 1949 when mathematician Claude Shannon published a paper on Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems. According to his employer at the time, Bell Labs, the work transformed cryptography from an art to a science and is generally considered the foundation of modern cryptography. Since then significant developments in secure communications have continued, particularly with the advent of the Internet and Web. CIO has a pictorial representation of the past six decades of research and development in encryption technology. Highlights include the design of the first quantum cryptography protocol by Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard in 1984, and the EFF's 'Deep Crack' DES code breaker of 1998."

Comments

Mention of Enigma

[fan of lem]

But none of Alan Turing.

How come?

[dex22]

How come history is written so that "Modern Cryptography" starts when an American writes a paper, some seven years after the British have developed computers to automatically crack Germany's enigma codes? Modern cryptography isn't just the creation of the cipher, but the appreciation of modern techniques to crack it.

If this article can make such an arbitrary assumption about what is modern, I give little credit to how misinformed the rest of the article may be. It's how Americans steal history, so they can define it in their own favor.

I do not mean to flame. I am just skeptical of assumptions, when such a basic assumption is so inherently wrong.

A funny side note.

[kurt555gs]

Several years ago I visited the National Cryptologic Museum at Ft Meade MD. http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/museum/

At the time you had to go through a gate with armed military types then make your way around to the museum parking lot. Once inside, I remembered that I had forgotten to lock my car doors, and mentioned to the guard that I was going to go back out to the parking lot to do this. He looked at me and said, "Don't worry about it, your car is being watched".

In any case, I highly recommend visiting this museum if you are a geek type. from a real Enigma that you can touch, to a Cray II that you can sit on, this place is cryptogeek heaven. A truly interesting experience.