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After the cracking of the simple form of the substitution cipher, the search was on for a new system of encryption, one that could re-establish secure communication. In the middle of the 19th century, when the telegraph was being developed, secure encryption was becoming even more of a necessity. After all, the telegraph was the Victorian equivalent of the internet. The system that could guarantee privacy online was the Vigenère cipher, named after one of its inventors, the 17th-century cryptographer Blaise de Vigenère. The cipher soon became known as 'le chiffre indéchiffrable' or 'the uncrackable cipher'. It was used by governments, diplomats, generals and businessmen. Everybody assumed that it was invulnerable, except for one person, the Victorian polymath Charles Babbage. Babbage believed that the cipher was flawed in some small way, and set himself the task of finding that flaw. For more than a century the story of Babbage's battle against the Vigenère cipher remained a secret, but a Danish scholar, Ole Franksen, has now brought to light this episode from the history of cryptography. Why was Babbage's research locked away for so many years? Codebreaking by its very nature is a clandestine activity, so perhaps it is not so surprising that the work of codebreakers is hushed up by those in power. 
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