Charles Babbage and deciphering codes (1864)
10 months ago
- #Cryptography
- #Historical Ciphers
- #Charles Babbage
- Charles Babbage wrote about deciphering in his autobiography, 'Passages from the Life of a Philosopher' (1864).
- Babbage believed deciphering was an art requiring time, ingenuity, and patience, though few ciphers were worth the effort.
- He noted a common belief among people that they could create an unbreakable cipher, a conviction he once shared.
- Babbage and Davies Gilbert both thought they had created an inscrutable cipher, only to discover they had the same idea.
- Later, Babbage challenged Dr. Fitton's cipher, proving it was flawed due to a mistake in its construction.
- The cipher involved two concentric circles with letters, where the inner circle rotated to encode messages.
- Babbage speculated that this cipher might have ancient origins, possibly in works by Schott or Trithemius.