TheCodeBreakers
simplicity of operation—commended it as a field cipher. Play-fair
suggested that it be used as just that in the impending
Crimean War when he brought it up at the dinner with Prince Albert.
No evidence exists that it was used then, but there are reports that it
served in the Boer War. Britain's War Office apparently kept it secret
because it had adopted the cipher as the British Army's field system.
Playfair's unselfish proselytizing for his friend's system unwittingly
cheated Wheatstone of his cryptographic heritage; though Playfair never
claimed the invention as his own, it came to be known in the War Office
as Playfair's Cipher, and his name has stuck to it to this day.
Five years later, an American who at the time was working for a stove
and foundry firm glanced briefly at cryp-tology and produced a single
short piece of work. It opened important new vistas into untrodden
annaabi.ee 
