TheCodeBreakers
word message into that cipher, challenges the cryptologist to break it on
the spot. William Jerdan, 19th-century British journalist, told in his
autobiography a very typical story of the birth of a cipher, reporting with
a refreshing touch of humor on the dreams of glory that often accompany
the nativity.
One evening, while Jerdan and his young friends were talking, the
subject of ciphers came up. Jerdan boasted that "I myself could frame a
system which nobody on earth could decypher and read" and bet a
dinner on it. Then somebody pulled down an encyclopedia to show him
the many systems that had been invented, and, said Jerdan, "when I
retired to rest fl] was on no very pleasant terms with myself, for I had
looked very like what I had no chance of inventing—a Cypher." But in the
morning he awoke "with a secret cypher concocted in my brain," which
he discussed with his friends, among them Thomas Wilde, a future Lord
Chancellor
annaabi.ee 
