'Codebreaker: The History of Codes and Ciphers'

Posted on Tue, Oct. 24, 2006
Review: 'Codebreaker: The History of Codes and Ciphers'
By Tish Wells
McClatchy Newspapers

Looking for a history book that would appeal to people who like math? Try "Codebreaker" - a short history of cryptology: the study of codes and ciphers.

Journalist Stephen Pincock, who is an editor at The Financial Times and The Scientist magazine and also writes for the medical journal The Lancet, has produced a simple, easy-to-understand book for all ages to enjoy.

As far back as 1500 B.C., the Mesopotamians (current-day Iraq) wrote coded letters. Rome's Julius Caesar was well known to send his confidential instructions in cipher.

Mary, Queen of Scots wrote coded letters, which were intercepted, translated and used at her treason trial against Elizabeth I. Mary was convicted and beheaded. Musicians will be intrigued by the codes embedded in the stones of Scotland's Rosslyn chapel (of "The Da Vinci Code" fame) and the as-yet unbroken coded letters of English classical composer Edward Elgar.

Pincock defines the difference between codes where you "tend to replace whole words or phrases according to a list contained in a code-book" and ciphers as where you replace "individual letters in the message with other symbols."

It took a century and more (in 1890) to break the "great cipher" of the 17th-century French King Louis XIV and read his secret messages. During World War II, the German Enigma machine code was broken by the British providing extremely important information while the Navaho code talkers provided unbreakable communication between islands in the South Pacific.

In more modern times, the National Security Agency is the United States' major code breaking government agency. The cutting edge of the future is quantum cryptology, which may be the most unbreakable code of all since it's based in the laws of physics.

Not that history isn't littered with codes that still hold their secrets. Many Victorians created their own codes, some of which are still unbroken. It took more than 150 years to solve Edgar Allen Poe's last published cipher. Yale University's elaborately illustrated Voynich Manuscript is either random gibberish or an alchemic handbook.

Lavishly photographed, "Codebreaker" includes historical tidbits and examples all the way through. At the very end are four challenges based on the code systems included in the book. The answers are on the Walker & Co. Web site.

There's a lot of history to explore in these codes.