From Cave Paintings to the Internet A Chronological and Thematic Database on the History of Information and Media Cryptography / Cryptanalysis Outline

The Hydraulic Telegraph
(350 BCE)

Carmina Figurata Word Pictures
(Circa 810)

One of the Earliest Surviving Italian Manuscripts on Technology and War Machines
(Circa 1420)

Perhaps One of the Greatest Written Hoaxes
(Circa 1450 – 1520)

The First Book on Cryptography
(July 1518)

The First "Unbreakable" Text Autokey Cipher
(1553)

The Vigenere Cipher
(1585)

The Earliest Surviving Catalogue of a Book Auction
(July 6, 1599)

The Rosetta Stone
(July 15, 1799)

Deciphering the Hieroglyphs
(1822)

The Morse Code
(1837)

Early Versions of the Enigma
(1919)

The Index of Coincidence Method of Code-Breaking
(1922)

The Enigma Machine is Introduced
(1923)

A Logarithmic Law for Communication
(1924)

The Biuro Szyfrow Breaks the Enigma Code
(December 1932)

An Experimental Electromechanical Cryptanalysis Machine Capable of Binary Multiplication
(1937)

Polish Cryptologic Bomb for Breaking Enigma-Machine Ciphers
(October 1938)

The Polish Cipher Bureau Reveals Enigma Decription Techniques to the French and British
(July 25, 1939)

Turing Reports to Bletchley Park
(September 4, 1939)

The Top-Secret Heath Robinson Cryptographic Computer
(1940 – 1941)

An Improved Bombe
(Circa December 1940)

Alan Turing Consults in New York
(1943)

The Colossus
(February 1944)

The Colossus Mark II is Operational
(June 1, 1944)

Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems
(1949)

Decipherment of Linear B
(1952 – 1953)

The Idea of a Genetic Code
(1954)

The First Amino Acid Sequence of a Protein
(1955)

On Protein Synthesis
(September 1957)

The Genetic Code
(1961)

ASCII is Promulgated
(1963)

Public Key Cryptography
(1976)

The Unicode Universal Character Set
(August 29, 1988)

Encoded Sculpture
(November 3, 1990)

The Genetic Code of Avian Flu Virus H5N1 is Deciphered
(October 5, 2005)

Decoding Printer Tracking Dots
(October 19, 2005)