A French cipher from the late 19th century

The Franco-Prussian war (1870--1871) was the first major European conflict during which extensive telegraph use enabled fast communication across large distances. Field officers would therefore have to learn how to use secret codes. But training officers also raises the probability that defectors would reveal these codes to the enemy. Practically all known secret codes at the time could be broken if the enemy knew how they worked. Under Kerckhoffs\u27 impulsion, the French military thus developed new codes, meant to resist even if the adversary knew the encoding and decoding algorithms, but simple enough to be explained and taught to military personnel. Many of these codes were lost to history. One of the designs however, due to Major H. D. Josse, has been recovered and this article describes the features, history, and role of this particular construction. Josse\u27s code was considered for field deployment and underwent some experimental tests in the late 1800s, the result of which were condensed in a short handwritten report. During World War II, German forces got hold of documents describing Josse\u27s work, and brought them to Berlin to be analyzed. A few years later these documents moved to Russia, where they have resided since

Frank Miller: Inventor of the One-Time Pad

The invention of the one-time pad is generally credited to Gilbert S. Vernam and Joseph O. Mauborgne. We show that it was invented about 35 years earlier by a Sacramento banker named Frank Miller. We provide a tentative identification of which Frank Miller it was, and speculate on whether or not Mauborgne might have known of Miller's work, especially via his colleague Parker Hitt

Real Life Cryptology

A large number of enciphered documents survived from early modern Hungary. This area was a particularly fertile territory where cryptographic methods proliferated, because a large portion of the population was living in the frontier zone, and participated (or was forced to participate) in the network of the information flow. A quantitative analysis of sixteenth-century to seventeenth-century Hungarian ciphers (300 cipher keys and 1,600 partly or entirely enciphered letters) reveals that besides the dominance of diplomatic use of cryptography, there were many examples of “private” applications too. This book reconstructs the main reasons and goals why historical actors chose to use ciphers in a diplomatic letter, a military order, a diary or a private letter, what they decided to encrypt, and how they perceived the dangers threatening their messages

The Seh-lerai Language

Near Eastern Languages and Civilization

On the Periphery of the Russo-Japanese War - Part I

Chapman: Major defects in British naval intelligence were the absence of an effective central department, an inferior network of naval attachés in major capitals prior to 1902 and the lack of secure direct cable communications with Northeast Asia. The performance of the Naval Intelligence Department was changed for the better by the efforts of Lord Selborne as First Lord of the Admiralty (1900-5). Selborne's promotion of Britain's alliance with Japan was conditional on a close working relationship with the administration of Theodore Roosevelt.Nish: There was considerable uncertainty and indecision about whether China would take part in the Russo-Japanese war. Finally under considerable outside pressure she declared strict neutrality. Since the civil administration in her Three Eastern Provinces (Manchuria) was in Chinese hands, she inevitably had a role in the war; and her people suffered much.The Portsmouth treaties that ended the war could only be implemented with China's agreement. Foreign Minister Komura had to conclude new treaties with China at the Peking Conference on 22 December 1905.Japan, China, Russia, Manchuria, Britain, Admiralty, Fisher, Selborne, Balfour, Uchida, Komura, Yuna Shikai, Great Northern Telegraphs, Naval Intelligence, Portsmouth Conference, Peking Conference.

The Assam Fever

'Wellcome History' is an easy and regular channel of communication between all Wellcome historians. It aims to be an informal, user-friendly centre of debate

Mercury of the Waves: Modern Cryptology and U.S. Literature

Mercury of the Waves: Modern Cryptology and U.S. LiteratureHenry VeggianUniversity of Pittsburgh, 2005The doctoral dissertation examines United States literary and institutional history during the period 1900-1973. The study demonstrates how cryptology was detached from its philological residence over three phases (the amateur, institutional, and professional). In the amateur phase, which was regionally specific to the Midwest, the science was characterized by social reformist debate. In the second, institutional phase, the amateur version of cryptology was institutionalized by the United States federal government following WWI to imitate a specific institutional model (that of the French Bureau du Chiffre). During the third, professional phase, the prior two were enhanced during the interwar period by linguists, mechanical engineers, literary modernists, and cryptologists. Running parallel to this narrative is a modern American literary genealogy that, beginning with Henry Adams and extending through Thomas Pynchon, engaged cryptology during that same era. The dissertation locates their discourse within Vichian humanism, and in doing so it first explains how modern literature (and the American novel in particular), its practices, and institutions contributed discursive rhetoric, hermeneutical methods, and institutional models to the emergent 20th century U.S. security state; secondly, it argues that a particular genealogical style that spans the writings of Henry Adams, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Raymond Chandler, and Thomas Pynchon elaborated an diverse rhetorical discourse by which to respond to that assemblage of new institutional entities, and without which that assemblage would be incoherent

Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann: Intertextual References and Private Meaning in Clara Schumann’s Opus 20 and Johannes Brahms’s Opus 9

Buer, Karin. Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann: Intertextual References and Private Meaning in Clara Schumann’s Opus 20 and Johannes Brahms’s Opus 9. Published Doctor of Arts dissertation, University of Northern Colorado, 2020. For centuries, composers have used their music as an expressive tool, imbuing it with publicly accessible meaning that often reflects the time and place in which the composer lived. Throughout the nineteenth century, the view of music as a means of expression, specifically self-expression, became crystallized as never before. Robert Schumann and other literary-minded nineteenth-century composers thus communicated, through their art, meanings which were both public and private, turning to extracompositional and extramusical references as a frequent means of doing so. Consequently, an intertextual approach to their music can reveal additional layers of expressive meaning and can allow current performers and listeners to interpret the music from the perspective of a romantic-era insider. Both Robert and Clara Schumann, and later Johannes Brahms, used their music to communicate amongst themselves and with close associates, especially in more intimate genres such as piano variations. Two works which are particularly ripe with intertextual references and private meaning are Clara’s Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann, Op. 20, which she gave to Robert as a birthday present in 1853, and Brahms’s Op. 9 variations on the same theme, which he wrote for Clara the following year. In her Op. 20 variations, Clara includes quotations and allusions to a number of Robert’s works as well as to works she was performing and therefore practicing at the time, rendering the piece the ultimate birthday present. Brahms, in response to Clara’s variations, composes a set which interweaves references to several of Robert’s works and one of Clara’s, often by layering multiple allusions within the same variation. In doing so, he pays respect to his beloved mentor—the recently institutionalized Robert—while privately providing comfort to and sharing the grief with Clara. A strong historical awareness rooted in documentary evidence, combined with a robust music-theoretical analysis drawing upon Schenkerian analytical methods, provides a mechanism for testing the strength of the connections found within these pieces