Word: coding
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Purple Code. The World War I episode concerns the notorious telegram sent by the German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmermann, to his envoy in Mexico; in code it stated Germany's intention of opening unlimited submarine warfare against the U.S. and offered various bribes to get Mexico's support. Decoded by British cryptanalysts, the telegram provided President Wilson with telling evidence to support the U.S. declaration of war on Germany...
...World War II, almost everyone knows that the U.S. broke Japan's highest level "Purple Code" before Pearl Harbor. But precious few realize what the breakthrough entailed. The code was based on a rotor system-mazes of wires connecting two or more alphabetic rotors that change ciphers at every punch of a keyboard. The use of two rotors permits 676 different cipher positions; five rotors provide 11,881,376 codes...
...solution of the Purple Code fell to the U.S. Army Signal Corps' chief cryptologist, William Friedman, whom Kahn calls the world's greatest code expert. Friedman and his superb team had a head start. For example, they had already solved lower-level codes, and were familiar with common Japanese forms, such as "I have the honor to inform Your Excellency." As Kahn says, "these constituted virtual cribs...
After intense effort, the cryptanalysts arrived at a good pencil-and-paper analogue of the Purple Code. That was only the beginning. From there they went on to construct their own model of Japan's encoding machine, which "spewed sparks and made loud whirring noises," but worked...
...Solution: Caesar's Code...