The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography - Hardcover

Singh, Simon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1857028791 ISBN 13: 9781857028799

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 1999

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem’, ‘The Code Book’ is an enthralling history of codes and code-breaking from Egyptian puzzles to modern-day computer encryptions.

Since humans began writing, they have been writing in code. This quest for secrecy has often changed the course of history. In ‘The Code Book’, Simon Singh offers a sweeping view of the subject of encryption as well as its more dramatic effects on the outcome of wars, monarchies and individual lives. Included in this fascinating book is the story of Mary Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code and put to death by Queen Elizabeth. Also recounted is the history of the Beale Ciphers, created in the early 19th-century to obscure the location of a treasure in gold, buried somewhere in Virginia. Singh also traces the monumental improvements in code-making and -breaking brought on by World Wars I and II, the outcomes of which could have been very different without the brilliance of the Allied code breakers. Now, in the Information Age, the possibility of a truly unbreakable code looms large and cryptography has become one of the major debates of our times. Simon Singh investigates the challenges to personal privacy that technology and the ways we communicate today have upon everyday lives. Dramatic, compelling, and remarkably far reaching, this is a book that will forever alter your view of history, what drives it, and how private that email you just sent really is.

About this title

About the Author

Simon Singh is a science journalist and TV producer. Having completed his Ph.D. at Cambridge he worked from 1991 to 1997 at the BBC producing Tomorrow’s World and co-directing the BAFTA award-winning documentary Fermat’s Last Theorem for the Horizon series. In 1997, he published Fermat’s Last Theorem, which was a no 1 best-seller in Britain and translated into 22 languages. In 1999, he published The Code Book.

From the Back Cover

Since humans began writing, they have been communicating in code. This obsession with secrecy has had dramatic effects on the outcome of wars, monarchies and individual lives.

With clear mathematical, linguistic and technological demonstrations of many of the codes, as well as illustrations of some of the remarkable personalities behind them – many courageous, some villainous – The Code Book traces the fascinating development of codes and code-breaking from military espionage in Ancient Greece to modern computer ciphers, to reveal how the remarkable science of cryptography has often changed the course of history.

Amongst many extraordinary examples, Simon Singh relates in detail the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code and put to death by Elizabeth I; the strange history of the Beale Ciphers, describing the hidden location of a fortune in gold, buried somewhere in Virginia in the nineteenth century and still not found; and the monumental efforts in code-making and code-breaking that influenced the outcomes of the First and Second World Wars.

Now, with the Information Age bringing the possibility of a truly unbreakable code ever nearer, and cryptography one of the major debates of our times, Singh investigates the challenge that technology has brought to personal privacy today.

Dramatic, compelling and remarkably far-reaching, The Code Book will forever alter your view of history, what drives it and how private your last e-mail really was.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1857028791
• ISBN 13: 9781857028799
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416