It was an electro-mechanic cryptographic machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. Famous, though, for being used by the German military forces during the 1930's. Its ease of use and alleged indecipherability of its codes were the main reasons for its popularity. The code, however, was deciphered, and the information in the messages it protected is generally thought of as responsable for the end of World War II at least one year earlier than most people predicted. ~Ally
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The Playfair Cipher is a polyalphabetic substitution cipher in a bigramic (or digramic) block. In this substitution, the letters are taken two by two (bigramic block) according to rules applied in a 5 by 5 grid that contains the cipher alphabet. It was created by Charles Wheatstone and presented in 1854 in a dinner offered by Lord Granville. However, it was Lord Playfair who promoted its use, and whose name became associated with the cipher. The safety of this cipher is low and its interest is only historic. Its cryptanalysis can be made through digraphs frequency analysis. Since it is a polyalphabetic cipher, though, the Playfair makes the decryption a little difficult. Since there are more digraphs than letters, the number of elements available for analysis diminishes. It has other advantages: one doesn't need tables or complicated devices to crack the code - only a key-word, that can be easily memorized or traded. The key-word is easily implemented and little prone to error, so it is a perfect system to be used as "field cipher". ~Ally
Ceasar Cipher - also known as trade cipher, Ceasar's code or Ceasar's trade -, is one of the most simple and known cryptographic techniques. It is a kind of substitution cipher where each letter of the alphabet is substituted by another, which presents itself on the alphabet under it a fixed number of times. For example, in a three positions trade, A would be substituted by D. The name is an homage to Julius Ceasar, who used it to communicate with his generals. The cryptography process of the Ceasar Cipher is frequently incorporated as part of more complex schemes and continues to have modern applications, as in the system ROT13. Like all monoalphabetic substitution ciphers, the Ceasar Cipher can be easily decrypted and, in practice, doesn't offer much safety in communication. According to Suetonius, Julius Ceasar used the three positions trade cipher to protect messages of military importance. Although the use of this scheme by Ceasar is the first one to be registered, it is known that other substitution ciphers were used previously. It is impossible to know if Ceasar's ciphers were effective during his time, but it was probably reasonably safe, given that most of Ceasar's enemies were illiterate and others presumed that his messages were writen in a foreign unknown language. ~Ally
Let us continue with our digressions on secret messages! Cryptology is the scientific discipline that gathers and studies the knowledge and techniques necessary to solve cryptograms (cryptanalysis) and to make cryptography (encrypted writing). Initially, its study was restricted to academic circles, bank security systems and military inteligence due to its application in confidential messages during war periods, State matters and espionage but, lately, it has received special attention because of the generalization of commercial operations through electronic means, where transactions must be processed secretly and safely, preferably with the lowest possible cost, since cryptographic messages consume a lot of processing time and transmission band. The oldest register of a work published on cryptanalysis comes from the Arabian philosopher Abu Yusuf Ya 'qub ibn Is-haq ibn as-Sabbah ibn 'omran ibn Ismail al-Kindi, called "A Manuscript about Decryption of Cryptographic Messages", on which he dealt about frequency analysis in encrypted texts. ~Ally
I became a fan of secret codes after reading Poe's "The Gold Bug", where the main characters discover a treasure by decrypting a message. Little did I know that encryptions have been used since ancient times, in many different ways, and with many purposes! So, let's start with some definitions and, in the next following days, I'll try to learn even more about this science. Cryptography is the study of the principles and techniques through which information can be transformed from its original form to another that is unreadable to all, except to its addressee, who must have the "secret key" to decrypt the message. It is also a brunch of Mathmatics and part of Cryptology. There are two kinds of cryptographic keys: symmetric and asymmetric. Through them, one can encrypt the "plain text" (the non-ciphered information). The study of cryptography, however, covers much more than only encryption and decryption. It's a specialized field of information theory, with many contributions from other branches of Mathmatics and knowledge, including authors as Sun Tzu and Machiavelli. Modern cryptography is basically formed by the study of cryptographic algorithms that can be implemented in computers. ~Ally
Such a great tune from Ed Sheeran, I couldn't not post it here. Enjoy while we wait for the movie! ~Ally
Once, Galileo proved that Dante Alighieri's hell existed through mathmatics. Yup. Back in 1585, Galileo Galilei was a strayed young man who had just dropped out of Medicine school to study exact sciences against his father's will. And, to compete for a vacancy of mathmatics professor in the University of Pisa, he decided to enter a polemic that moved that century's science: where is hell? And what is it like? Well, he located Alighieri's version of hell. Which isn't quite the same thing - or is it? - as the traditional Christian hell. Whatever. Using math, Galileo stated that hell had a conic shape and was situated in the deepest part of the center of the Earth and its roof was right below the earth crust, around Jerusalem. Oooookeydokey. ~Ally
Spoiler alert: no Transformers found there... Yet. ~Ally
And, before you think "Frankenstein!", no, I'm not talking about him - although I kind of have been in a Frankenstein-mood lately, hummm! Anyway, remember the other day when I wrote about Galvanism? Well, today I read about its most curious applications, performed by none other than Giovanni Aldini, the nephew of Luigi Galvani, who quite possibly was one of the inspirations for Mary Shelley's work. Aldini, a 19th century Italian physicist spent most of his life testing the medical applications of his uncle's discovery and ended up becoming quite a celebrity. For his contributions to science, the emperor of Austria even made him a Knight of the Iron Crown! "But what did he do?", you might be wondering. Your actual question should be "what DIDN'T he hook up to batteries?!" I'll tell you what, the man experimented with every animal he could get his hands on, from cows and dogs... To humans. Yeap. Human corpses, you've heard me. He traveled Europe with a kind of "science circus" in which he electrocuted carcasses and corpses for the delight of the audience. In January 1803, Aldini presented his most famous experiment. He was given the body of a hanged criminal, George Forster, who had been executed for the murder of his wife and child. Displaying Forster's body for the public to see, he electrocuted his face, which started to twitch and move; his mouth and eyes opening and, according to all accounts, he looked very much alive. But believing he did not freak out the people and humiliated Forster enough, Aldini stuck an electrified rod straight up the corpse's, ahm, bottom, after which the body started to kick and punch around so much, most people were sure he came back to life and started screaming about hanging him again. Oh, 19th century people... How do you kill something that's already dead? ~Ally
I knew great pirates had bad endings once they were caught, but man, that's a little too much! Nevertheless, it seems to be true. Our beloved Edward Teach, better known as the most fearsome pirate of all time, Blackbeard, spent years terrorizing the East Coast and the Caribbean. A bear of a man with lit fuses in his beard and a less than neighborly disposition, he eventually was sentenced to death. And to make sure that the sturdy pirate had finally bit the sawdust, they cut his head off. That would be ok, if it was the only thing they did to his head. It wasn't. Initially, Blackbeard's head was stuck on a pole by the mouth of a river in Williamsburg, Virginia, as a brutal warning to anybody else harboring aspirations of piracy. Eventually, when the flesh had rotted away, somebody decided to do something else with it: to drink liquids out of it. Yew. The Raleigh Tavern appropriated Blackbeard's skull, plated it with silver, and converted it into the bottom of a huge novelty punch bowl, bizarrely known as "The Infant." For over a century, the Infant remained there, occasionally being lent out to dinner parties, believe it or not. By the 1920s, the skull had disappeared. It resurfaced sometime in the 1990s and is now on display at the Peabody Essex Museum. ~Ally
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