The Code Book

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The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography is a book written by Simon Singh and published in 1999 by Doubleday of New York; ISBN 0-385-49531-5.

The Code Book covers a diverse set of historical topics including The Man in the Iron Mask, Arabic cryptography, Charles Babbage, the mechanisation of cryptography, the Enigma Machine, and the decipherment of Linear B and other ancient writing systems. Later sections cover the development of public key cryptography and some of this material is based on interviews with the participants, including those who worked in secret at GCHQ. The book concludes with a discussion of PGP, quantum computing, and quantum cryptography. The book announced a "Cipher Challenge" of a series of ten progressively harder codes with a cash prize of £10,000. The contest has since been completed. The book is not footnoted, but does have a "Further Reading" section at the end which is organized by chapter.

References

• "Of Riddles Wrapped in Enigmas", Whitfield Diffie, The Times Higher Education Supplement, September 10, 1999, page 25.
• "The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography, reviewed by Jim Reeds", Jim Reeds, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 47 No. 3, March 2000, pp: 369-372.

External links

• "The Code Book" web page at Simon Singh's site

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