{"id":3988,"date":"2005-12-04T12:19:35","date_gmt":"2005-12-04T17:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3988"},"modified":"2015-05-19T09:12:54","modified_gmt":"2015-05-19T13:12:54","slug":"code-makers-and-code-breakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3988","title":{"rendered":"Code makers and code breakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m now reading The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. Thanks, Iain<\/a>!<\/p>\n

I knew NONE of this stuff, but it sounded very interesting – and, just as I expected, an entire WORLD has been revealed to me. The world of trying to keep communications secret – and how codes have developed through the centuries. Different kinds of codes – from invisible ink to the Enigma machine. The race between the people who make up the codes – and the people devoted to breaking the codes.<\/p>\n

Once a code is broken – it can no longer be used – so there is an entire industry of people (linguists, mathematicians, electronics wizards) devoted to creating a code that cannot be broken.<\/p>\n

The entire Beale mystery<\/a> was amazing. Never knew ANYTHING about ANY of this.<\/p>\n

I love discovering an entire world, an entire industry – that I never knew existed. It’s like a veil being lifted back on how a certain slice of our world works. It goes back to what I was expressing in this post<\/a>. No one can ever know EVERYthing – but stuff like this makes me feel like I can get a bit closer, or … a bit higher up in my perspective.<\/p>\n

I’m not a math person, so much of the math in the book is very difficult for me to comprehend. Singh goes into how certain codes are constructed, and he includes in the book multiple ciphers to be decoded (to any reader who feels up to the task). My brain doesn’t really work that way – stuff like that always baffled me in school – I couldn’t comprehend where to even begin. I had a hell of a time with word problems, for example. COULD NOT GET THEM. I was good at geometry, and that’s about it. Algebra? Argh. Couldn’t get it. So much of this stuff is intensely mysterious to me and I have nothing but the deepest admiration for those who can look at a coded text, and start to break it down, figuring out the message beneath.<\/p>\n

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