Abstract
As there is no manual of cryptography in English, this book, which is translated from the French, will be welcomed by all who wish to make a serious study of the subject, either for practical purposes or as an intellectual exercise. The author deals with his subject under three heads. Under the first he. gives a brief history of the methods of conveying information secretly, beginning with the Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans; under the second he gives examples of cryptographical writings of which he himself has found the solution, for the most part, during the War; and under the third he gives lists and tables of frequency of single letters, bigrams, and other combinations in English and other languages. This section will naturally be one of the most frequently consulted in the book, as a knowledge of the relative frequency of occurrence of the different letters and combinations is essential in all decipherment. The translator adds a supplementary chapter dealing with methods of conveying information secretly, such as the use of sympathetic inks, tramps' signs, the marking of cards by cardsharpers, and the like, and describes the Playfair cipher, a substitution system extensively used for military purposes, Commander W. W. Smith, United States Navy, adding a note on its solution.
Cryptography.
André
Langie
By. Translated from the French by J. C. H. Macbeth. Pp. viii + 192. (London, Bombay and Sydney: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1922.) 9s. net.
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Cryptography. Nature 111, 737 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/111737b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/111737b0