[ News
| Homes
| Life
| Entertainment
| History
| Science
| Community
| Shop ]
| Sport
| Culture
| Cars
| Money
| Broadband
| Learning
| Health
| Dating
| Games ]
[ Text Only: Homepage ]
[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]
The American
Cryptogram Association (ACA)
www.und.nodak.edu/org/crypto/crypto
The American Cryptogram Association (ACA) site, which specialises
in setting and solving cipher puzzles.
Cryptography
Frequently Asked Questions
www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/
cryptography-faq/top.html
Ohio State University site for 'Frequently Asked (cryptography) questions'.
Cryptologia
Journal
www.dean.usma.edu/math/pubs/cryptologia
A quarterly journal devoted to all aspects of cryptology.
Journal of
Cryptology
www.swcp.com/~iacr/jofc/jofc.html
The official journal of the International Association for Cryptologic
Research details all the latest developments and results in all areas
of modern information security.
National Cryptologic
Museum
www.nsa.gov/museum/index.html
The National Cryptologic Museum's website details the various methods
and machinery used in creating codes, which are held as exhibits by
the museum. Each exhibit online is illustrated with colour photographs.
The Science
of Secrecy by Simon Singh (Fourth Estate, 2000) £9.99.
The book that accompanies the Channel 4 series, with more about all
the topics covered in the programmes and on this website.
The Codebreakers
by David Kahn (Simon and Schuster, 1997) £45.00.
A 1,200-page history of ciphers up to the 1950s.
Cryptography
by Lawrence Dwight Smith (Dover, 1955) £6.95.
A simple introduction to cryptography, with more than 150 sample problems.
Cryptology
- Spectrum by Albrecht Beutelspacher (Mathematical Association
of America, 1996) £17.95.
An overview of the subject, from the Caesar cipher to public-key cryptography,
concentrating on the mathematics, rather than the history.
Elementary
Cryptanalysis by Abraham Sinkov (The Mathematical Association
of America, 1978) £16.95.
An explanation of the fundamental techniques of cryptanalysis or codebreaking.
Encyclopaedia
of Cryptology by David E Newton (ABC-Clio, 1997) £12.99.
Clear, concise explanations of most aspects of ancient and modern
cryptography.
'The Origins of
Cryptology: The Arab contributions', by Ibrahim A Al-Kadi
Cryptologia, volume 16, no 2 (April 1992), pages 97–126.
A discussion of recently discovered Arab manuscripts.
The Babington
Plot
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~jmcgill/project.html
University of Pennsylvania educational site about the background
to the plot.
Caesar's Cipher
http://library.thinkquest.org/28005/flashed/
timemachine/courseofhistory/caesar.shtml
A simple site explaining Caesar's cipher with a simple
interactive programme that allows you to encode your own messages.
This window is part of the US ThinkQuest site, an international challenge
for people aged 12-19 to use the internet for research and learning.
History of
Cryptology
http://home.att.net/~tleary/cryptolo.htm
A paper on the history of cryptology in Elizabethan and Jacobean
times to the Restoration.
Introduction
to Steganography
www.cs.uct.ac.za/courses/CS400W/NIS/
papers99/dsellars/stego.html
University of Cape Town site with a link containing a general
introduction to steganography, charting the developments from Roman
times, through the Middle Ages to the current use of digital 'watermarking'.
Also looks at steganalysis - the science of detecting hidden
images.
Steganographics
http://members.tripod.com/steganography/stego.html
A comprehensive site by a US academic on all things steganographic:
history, discussion sites, recommended books, reviews of latest computer
programmes and a newsletter.
Mary Queen
of Scots by Antonia Fraser (Phoenix, 16 August 2001) £14.99.
A highly readable account of the life of Mary Queen of Scots.
The Reckoning:
The Murder of Christopher Marlowe by Charles Nicoll (University
of Chicago Press, 1995) £10.99. US edition only. Available through
online bookstores.
A book concentrating on the circumstances surrounding the poet's death
but which contains an interesting chapter on the Babington plot and
generally a great insight into Elizabethan espionage and dirty tricks.
The Trial of
Mary Queen of Scots edited by Jayne Elizabeth Lewis (Palgrave,
1999) £9.99.
A documentary history of the trial of Mary Queen of Scots. Contains
a 35-page introduction on the political and social history of 16th-century
England and 100 pages of documents from the trial.
Ancient Egypt
www.ancientegypt.co.uk/writing/home.html
Linked to the British Museum site (see below), this interactive learning
site looks at hieroglyphs and The Rosetta stone, the 'key' that unlocked
the mystery of the ancient script.
The British
Museum
www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/education/egypt/home.html
The website of the British Museum in London, which holds the largest
collection of Egyptian artefacts outside Cairo, has a section on Ancient
Egypt providing information sheets and details of courses and events,
plus further reading and web links.
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
by W V Davies (British Museum Press, 1987) £5.59.
Part of series of introductory texts published by the British Museum
Press.
How to Read
Egyptian Hieroglyphs by Mark Collier and Bill Manley (British
Museum Press, 1998) £9.99.
An excellent book for beginners who want to learn about the script
of the ancient Egyptians.
The Keys of
Egypt: The race to read the hieroglyphs by Lesley Adkins and Roy
Adkins (HarperCollins, 2000) £16.99.
The story of the race to decipher hieroglyphs, and the rediscovery
of the Nile Valley after it had been closed to Europeans for nearly
1,500 years.
Charles Babbage
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Babbage.html
Biography of Charles Babbage.
'Babbage and Cryptography.
Or the Mystery of Admiral Beaufort's cipher' by Ole Immanuel Franksen,
Mathematics and Computer Simulation, volume 35 (1993), pages
327-67.
A detailed paper on Babbage's cryptographical work, and his relationship
with Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort.
The Cogwheel
Brain by Doron Swade (Little Brown, 2000) £14.99.
A fascinating biography of Charles Babbage, focusing on his struggle
to design and build his calculating and computing engines.
The Victorian
Internet by Tom Standage (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998) £6.99.
The remarkable story of the development of the electric telegraph.
The Great War
Society
www.worldwar1.com/tgws/links.htm
This huge site includes material on the Zimmermann telegram to
the German ambassador in Washington, which changed American public
opinion about the war.
The Public
Record Office
www.pro.gov.uk
Site of the UK Public Record Office (PRO) at Kew, which holds original
documents and public records. The PRO has a file on Nigel de Grey,
who deciphered the Zimmermann telegram. Quote file no. hw3/177 if
contacting the PRO about de Grey.
Alan Turing
www.turing.org.uk/turing
The Alan Turing homepage containing photographs of and a detailed
biography and guide to the man who cracked the Enigma code.
Books
The Zimmermann
Telegram by Barbara Tuchman (Ballantine, 1994) £11.00.
An account of this most influential decipherment in all its exciting
detail.
Alan Turing:
The Enigma by Andrew Hodges (Vintage, 1992) £8.99.
The life and work of Alan Turing.
The Codebreakers;
The Inside History of Bletchley Park by F.H. Hinsley and Alan
Stripp (Oxford University Press, 1992) £8.99.
A collection of illuminating essays by the men and women who were
part of one of the greatest cryptanalytic achievements in history.
Enigma
by Robert Harris (Arrow, 1996) £5.99.
A novel revolving around the codebreakers at Bletchley Park.
Seizing the
Enigma by David Kahn (Arrow, 1996) £7.99.
A history of the battle of the Atlantic and the importance of cryptography.
Station X
by Michael Smith (Channel 4 Books, 1999) £5.99
The book based on the Channel 4 TV series of the same name, containing
anecdotes from those who worked at Bletchley Park, otherwise known
as Station X.
AT&T Research
Site
www.research.att.com/~smb/nsam-160
A research page on US phone company AT&T's site discussing
the prehistory of the public-key cryptography breakthrough, detailing
the evidence that suggests assorted intelligence agencies knew of
the technique years earlier.
Electronic
Frontier Foundation
www.eff.org
An organisation devoted to protecting rights and freedom on the internet.
The Information
Security Group (ISG)
http://isg.rhbnc.ac.uk
The ISG carries out academic research into areas like smart cards,
electronic commerce, and security management.
RSA Data Security
www.rsasecurity.com
Home site of RSA laboratories, the company formed to commercialise
the cipher. Contains the usual corporate information: company news,
events, conferences and so on, but interesting in that it gives an
impression of the scale and dynamics of data protection in the digital
age.
Applied Cryptography
by Bruce Schneier (John Wiley & Sons, 1996) £35.50.
A comprehensive and authoritative introduction to modern cryptography.
'The Mathematics
of Public Key Cryptography' by M E Hellman, Scientific American,
volume 241 (August 1979), pages 130-39.
An excellent overview of the various forms of public-key cryptography.
'New Directions
in Cryptography' by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, IEEE Transactions
on Information Theory, volume IT-22 (November 1976), pages 644-54.
The paper revealing the discovery of key exchange, opening the door
to public-key cryptography.
'A New Kind of
Cipher that Would Take Millions of Years to Break' by Martin Gardner,
Scientific American, volume 237 (August 1977), pages 120-124.
This website contains links to other websites which are not under
the control of and are not maintained by Channel 4 Television. Channel
4 Television is not responsible for the content of these sites and
does not necessarily endorse the material on them.
Graphic
version
Includes layout and images.