Message Encoding from Ancient Rome to WW2 Germany
Message Encoding from Rome to WW2 Germany, by Ellen Hetland Fenwick "What matter all these mysteries to me Whose life is full of indices and surds?" [caption id="attachment_14580" align="alignright" width="380"] 1946 Captain Midnight Mirro-Flash Code-O-Graph[/caption] X²+ 7X + 53 = 11/3 - Lewis Carroll It started with my reading a wonderful book, “From Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography” by Simon Singh, 1999. It became clear to me that much of the process used by the Nazis in the workings of the Enigma, the encryption machine that encoded and decoded messages for the Nazis during World War II, originated in ancient Rome. Evolution of Enigma involved only two major advances in cryptography over the course of almost 2000 years. These steps will be described in the remainder of this…