How mathematics spread and transformed cryptographic activities
Résumé
This paper intends to clarify the practices of cryptology, and their progressive entanglement with mathematics. It includes two parts. The first is related to the period when the main tools for cyphering and code breaking came from the analysis of language. Nevertheless, since the Arabic scholars, mathematics has been locally introduced for breaking codes, but the various techniques evolved slowly because of the secret around these practices. Simultaneously, new cyphering practices were also produced to counter attempts to break the codes. The second part begins with the military use of telegraph and the claim by Auguste Kerckhoffs to focus on cryptographic systems rather than on individual secret messages. Step by step, dealing with cryptographic systems opened the way to mechanical devices and also to the mathematical analysis of their running, both to overcome the subsequent modes of cyphering and to define them.
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