Cryptography History Timeline

Interactive timeline of cryptography history from ancient times to modern era

Filter by Era

1900 BCEAncient Era

First Known Cipher

Egyptian scribes use non-standard hieroglyphs in inscriptions

500 BCEAncient Era

Spartan Scytale

Ancient Greeks use transposition cipher for military messages

50 BCEClassical Era

Caesar Cipher

Julius Caesar develops substitution cipher for military correspondence

800 CEClassical Era

Frequency Analysis

Al-Kindi writes about breaking substitution ciphers

1467Classical Era

Alberti Cipher Disk

First polyalphabetic cipher mechanism invented

1586Classical Era

Vigenere Cipher

Strong polyalphabetic cipher published

1918Modern Era

One-Time Pad

Perfectly secure encryption method developed

1942Modern Era

Enigma Broken

Allied codebreakers crack German Enigma machine

1976Digital Era

Public Key Cryptography

Diffie and Hellman publish revolutionary key exchange

1977Digital Era

RSA Algorithm

First practical public-key encryption system

2001Digital Era

AES Standard

Rijndael selected as new encryption standard

2009Digital Era

Bitcoin & Blockchain

Cryptocurrency demonstrates practical cryptographic applications

Key Milestones

50 BCE

Caesar Cipher

Simple substitution

1918

One-Time Pad

Perfect secrecy

1976

Public Key

Key exchange revolution

2001

AES

Modern standard

Famous Cryptographers

Alan Turing

1912-1954

Broke Enigma, founded computer science

Claude Shannon

1916-2001

Father of information theory

Whitfield Diffie

1944-present

Co-invented public-key cryptography

Bruce Schneier

1963-present

Author, security expert, Blowfish creator

Cryptography Evolution

Manual Ciphers

Hand-operated substitution and transposition

Ancient - 1900

Mechanical

Cipher machines like Enigma

1900 - 1970

Symmetric

DES, AES computer algorithms

1970 - 1990

Asymmetric

RSA, ECC public-key systems

1976 - present

Quantum-Safe

Post-quantum cryptography

2020+

Did You Know?

The word "cryptography" comes from Greek words meaning "hidden writing".

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