Abstract
Cryptography is the art or science, depending on how you look at it, of keeping messages secure. It has been around for a couple of thousand years in various forms. The Spartan Lysander and even Caesar made use of cryptography in some of their communications. Others in history include Roger Bacon, Edgar Allan Poe, Geoffrey Chaucer, and many more. By today’s standards cryptographic techniques, through the ages right up to the end of World War I, have been pretty primitive. With the development of the electro-mechanical devices cryptography came of age. The subsequent evolution of the computer has raised the level of security that cryptography can provide in communications and data storage.