TheCodeBreakers
unsolvability of his brainchild. (The tendency to claim this in patents
has, however, been receding with the rise of cryptologic sophistication.)
In 1744, Leonhard Euler, the great Swiss mathematician, sent to a friend
a monoalphabetic substitution cryptogram that had a few homophones,
expressing his belief that it could not be deciphered. He was only slightly
more naive than most inventors. A representative of the humanities,
Walter W. Skeat, a distinguished English philologist and editor of
Chaucer, proposed a cipher in 1896 that amounted to a Vigenere with
key ABCDE; when hordes of amateur cryptanalysts knocked it off, he
had the grace to bow and retire. Nearly all the cryptographic fossils
entombed in dusty books or in old files of patent offices deserve their
oblivion. They are too prone to error or too easy to solve or too
cumbersome. Many an inventor delights in intricacy. Poorly endowed
annaabi.ee 
