Cryptology: Historical Highlights

Prehistory and ancient world		Naive encryption methods
Al-Khalil	≈780	Method of the probable word
Ad-Duraihim	≈1360	Frequency analysis
Alberti	1466	Polyalphabetic ciphers (Porta 1563)
Bellaso	1553	Use of keys
Bazeries	1891	Cipher cylinder (Jefferson 1790)
Kasiski	1861	Disenchanting polyalphabetic ciphers (Babbage 1846)
Kerkhoffs	1883	Principles of good encryption
Vernam	1917	Binary encryption
Hebern, ...	1919	Rotor machines (van Hengel/Spengler 1915)
Friedman	1922	Systematic exploration of statistical methods for cryptanalysis
Hill	1929	Algebraic methods
Flowers	1944	Cryptanalysis enters the electronic era.
Shannon	1949	Methods of Information Theory
Feistel	1970	Systematic approach to bitblock encryption
Diffie/Hellman	1976	Asymmetric cryptography (Ellis 1970)
Shamir, ...	1991	Advanced methods of cryptanalysis

Antiquity – 15th Century	Monoalphabetic substitution
14th Century – WW II	Nomenclator/Codebook
19th Century – WW II	Mechanical devices (cipher disks, slides, cylinders)
WW I – ≈1970	Electromechanical devices (rotor and pinwheel machines)
≈1970 – now	Electronic ciphers (hard- and software)
1971 – 2000	DES and DH, RSA, ECC
2001 – now	AES and DH, RSA, ECC

Cryptology