The Hidden History of Code-Breaking
The Secret World of Cyphers, Uncrackable Codes, and Elusive Encryptions
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A fascinating exploration of the uncrackable codes and secret cyphers that helped win wars, spark revolutions and change the faces of nations.
There have been secret codes since before the Old Testament, and there were secret codes in the Old Testament, too. Almost as soon as writing was invented, so too were the devious means to hide messages and keep them under the wraps of secrecy.
In The Hidden History of Code Breaking, Sinclair McKay explores these uncrackable codes, secret ciphers, and hidden messages from across time to tell a new history of a secret world. From the temples of Ancient Greece to the court of Elizabeth I; from antique manuscripts whose codes might hold prophecies of doom to the modern realm of quantum mechanics, we will see how a few concealed words could help to win wars, spark revolutions and even change the faces of great nations.
Here is the complete guide to the hidden world of codebreaking, with opportunities for you to see if you could have cracked some of the trickiest puzzles and lip-chewing codes ever created.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist and historian McKay (The Secret Lives of Codebreakers) offers a sweeping examination of codes, ciphers, and other types of encrypted communication from ancient Greece to today's intelligence agencies. In brief sections, McKay catalogs "50 codes that changed the world," delving into their origins, uses, and how to decipher them. Topics covered include an ancient Greek system of rods and strips of paper used for battlefield communication (the jumbled message on the strip of paper could only be deciphered when wound around a rod in a certain way); the ciphers used by the Venerable Bede in medieval England (religious correspondents dabbling in heretical affairs, fearful of interference from the authorities, would use ciphers to prove the authenticity of their letters); and Samuel Morse's system of dots and dashes. A more extensive treatment is given to Bletchley Park, the top-secret British compound where computer scientist Alan Turing and his team cracked the Nazis' Enigma coding machine. Presented in a breezy style, with each section capped by a historically based puzzle for the reader to solve, this delights and intrigues.
