Tracing The History Of Codes And Ciphers Around The Globe

The idea of hiding messages dates back to when messages were used for communicating. Various ingenious methods were developed to conceal and protect crucial information, leading to today’s search behind these codes and ciphers.  Starting from ancient Rome, and Greece to Ancient Italy and Hebrews, their historic codes and ciphers formed the formwork for today's cryptography.  In our modern-day explorations, we have uncovered great historical content of techniques to strategize military-based wars, conduct political affairs, perform hidden cultural rituals, security secrets, and historical trade and commerce as well. All these methods simply showcased the beauty of the high intellectual power of the people and formed the basis for our modern encryption practices.

Are Codes and Ciphers the Same? 

Both codes and ciphers are methods to conceal any message and keep it safeguarded from the general public. Despite the similarity in working both codes and ciphers operate in slightly different ways:

Codes - Codes involve substituting entire words, symbols, or phrases with other words, hidden meanings, and symbols. Codes are prearranged by the sender and receiver keeping the message hidden from the public. 

Ciphers - Ciphers are more complex than codes, they involve transforming whole alphabetic orders according to any specific algorithm which changes the arrangement of letters and symbols. It can include shifting the order of letters up or down or replacing the letters and symbols with each other for harder-to-crack messages. 

Types of Popular Historical Codes And Ciphers All Around The Globe

1. Caesar Cipher

Timeline: Originated around 100 BC.

It is one of the oldest ciphers known to mankind, named after Julius Caesar himself. He used this cipher to communicate political and military campaigns and used simple substitution cipher for his writings. It involves shifting each letter of the alphabet a fixed number of places down or up. It was decoded with brute force methods. 

2. Vigenère Cipher

Timeline: Known around the 16th century.

The Vigenère cipher is known for its strength and is named after founder Blaise de Vigenère. It was a cipher considered the toughest for many centuries until it was decoded in the 19th century. It uses a polyalphabetic substitution using a keyword to shift letters. It was much stronger than Caesar's cipher and was used by military heads, diplomats, and government officials at that time for their secret communication during various important historical periods.

3. Play fair cipher 

Timeline: Popularised in the 19th century.

Invented by Charles Wheatstone in 1854, but popularised by Lyon Playfair during the Crimean War this cipher used a 5X5 grid of letters, where each pair of letters is replaced with specific letters from the grid according to a set of rules described. It was used by armed forces during the Crimean War, Boer War, 1st World War, and 2nd World War to protect their important classified information. It was a much stronger and safer cipher than Caesar's or Vigenère’s methods. 

4. Enigma Machine 

Timeline: Developed in the early 20th century, around 1910s.

This code machine was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius. The enigma machine was a device used for coding and later decoding messages. Marking a historic milestone, It produced ciphertext from plain text messages which helped the German military to communicate during the 2nd world War. Initially, it was considered very strong until decoded by Allied cryptanalysts mainly Alan Turing, which resulted in a valuable intelligence insight for the victory of the Allied Forces in the war.

5. RSA Cipher  

Timeline: Invented in the late 1970s by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman.

Rivest-Shamir-Adleman Cipher or RSA cipher is used for the security of digital data and communication. It is a public-key encryption algorithm that relies on factoring the products of 2 large prime numbers (public key, private key) to secure the communication. To break this encryption factoring large integers is required which is still a task for modern-day technology. It is used in applications like securing internet communications, digital signatures, and data in government, finance, and healthcare sectors as well. 

6. Hieroglyphic Codes

Timeline: Originated around 3100 BC and used till the 4th century AD in Ancient Egypt.

Hieroglyphic codes were composed of symbols that represent objects, sounds, or even concepts. These writings were a sophisticated means of communication that offered a glimpse of the historical events of ancient Egyptians and served as recording history eternalizing stories of Egyptian gods and pharaohs unlocking the treasure of the world’s oldest civilization. In 1799 Rosetta stone was discovered, we found text in many scripts, including Greek, helping to decipher the codes.

7. Book Cipher 

Timeline: Their invention dates back to the 15th century, with efficient methods of printing books. 

These ciphers emerged with ways to write texts leveraging the need to conceal messages within the pages. It made the sender and receiver use the same book, where every word they wrote was a cipher shielding the true message within the words. Keys were hidden in the key books and messages were only transcripted if the sender and receivers were using the same edition of the key book. It was an easy method to decode if the third person knew what book the cipher was keyed in. 

8. Knights Templar Cipher

Timeline: Created during the 12th and 13th centuries.

Also known as the Pigpen cipher, It is a polyalphabetic cipher that requires a knowledge of grids and symbols for forming and interpreting messages. With a general knowledge of the grid order and alphabet placements, these ciphers were used by knights templar in crusades which made it clear how important it was for concealing messages for military and politics during the era. 

9. Roman Numerical Cipher

Timeline: Originated in Ancient Rome the ciphers were seen between 900 and 800 B.C.

These ciphers used numerical values according to the Roman numerical system, where  I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, L = 50, C = 100, D = 500, and M = 1000. They were used for military communication and administrative service secrecy in Roman times and contained sensitive information providing simple yet effective encodings. The interplay between the numerical and letters provided importance in safeguarding cryptography. 

10. Voynich Manuscript

Timeline: Originated in the early 15th century and rediscovered in 1912. 

Named after the rare book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, the purpose of these manuscripts still seems to be unknown. These texts contain natural languages, statistical patterns, or word structures that are speculated to be artificial language elaborating countless alchemical works and extra-terrestrial communications. Despite numerous efforts, these manuscripts resisted all the efforts and remain deciphered for the world. 

11. Skytale Cipher

Timeline: The origin dates back to ancient Greece around the 5th century BC.

The skytale Cipher was used by the Spartans during their military campaigns to make military tactics. It involved writing a message along the sides of parchment paper and wrapping it around a cylinder of a specific diameter. To decode the message that specific diameter of the cylinder is required to position the words as decided. The beauty of this method lies in its simplicity and effective working. 

12. Beale Ciphers

Timeline: Found around 1820-1830.

Beale Ciphers started from a general pamphlet called The Beale Papers, which was published in 1885 by James Ward. It had a tale of buried treasure and 3 messages left by a man named Thomas Beale. It had 3 ciphertexts that described the treasure's location, its contents, and a list of the names of the treasure's owners. Written in a numerical form the texts represent either some words or phrases. The key for decoding is also a document called Baele’s declaration but despite many attempts, this mystery remains unsolved. One out of 3 ciphertexts have been solved which clears the fact that this cipher is indeed real.

13. Morse code 

Timeline: Invented in the early 1830s 

Morse code was discovered by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail for use in the telecommunication industry. It had two standard sequences, dots and dashes (or dits and dahs) that represented short or long signals respectively. These messages are transmitted as electrical signals along telegraph lines and then decoded at the receiving end for communication. Morse codes played an important role in communication, maritime and aviation radio communication, SOS signals, and radio operations. These can easily be decoded by interpreting the sequences of dots and dashes back to text characters using a Morse code guide or chart which shows what each character means specifically. 

Conclusion 

Codes and ciphers are fascinating to look at but played an equally significant role in historical communication and developments. Ranging from ancient codes to modern-day ciphers, the transfer of information has seen a great evolution and adaptation according to generational needs.  As we still strive to explore the secrets of the past, deciphering the mysteries ignited curious minds and sparked the imagination of cryptographers around the globe. If you like to get help with such articles try our essay writing service and explore more intriguing topics.