Codes / Cryptography / Cryptanalysis Timeline Outline

The First Treatise on Cryptanalysis
(Circa 850)

The First Known Digraphic Substitution Cypher
(1563)

The Vigenere Cipher
(1586)

The Earliest Surviving Catalogue of a Book Auction
(July 6, 1599)

Descartes Discusses the Idea of an Artificial Language
(1629)

The First Extensive Treatise on the Peruvian Knot-Based Counting Language, the Quipu
(1750)

The Copiale Cipher is Decrypted: Initiation into a Secret Society of Oculists
(Circa 1760 – 1780)

The Chappe Telegraph
(1794)

The Rosetta Stone
(July 15, 1799)

Deciphering the Hieroglyphs
(1822)

Deciphering the Hieroglyphs
(1823)

Decipherment of the Mayan System of Counting
(1832)

Origins of the Morse Code
(1837)

Morse Transmits the First Message by Morse Code
(May 24, 1844)

The Baudot Code, The First Means of Digital Communication
(1870 – 1874)

The First Catalogue of a Library on Computing and its History
(1872)

Early Versions of the Enigma
(1919)

The Index of Coincidence Method of Code-Breaking
(1922)

The Enigma Machine is Introduced
(1923)

A Logarithmic Law for Communication
(1924)

The Biuro Szyfrow Breaks the Enigma Code
(December 1932)

An Experimental Electromechanical Cryptanalysis Machine Capable of Binary Multiplication
(1937)

Polish Cryptologic Bomb for Breaking Enigma-Machine Ciphers
(October 1938)

The Polish Cipher Bureau Reveals Enigma Decription Techniques to the French and British
(July 25, 1939)

Turing Reports to Bletchley Park
(September 4, 1939)

The Top-Secret Heath Robinson Cryptographic Computer
(1940 – 1941)

An Improved Bombe
(Circa December 1940)

Alan Turing Consults in New York
(1943)

The Colossus
(January 1944)

The Colossus Mark II is Operational
(June 1, 1944)

Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems
(1945 – 1949)

Warren Weaver Suggests Applying Cryptanalysis Techniques to Translation
(March 4 – May 9, 1947)

The Hamming Codes
(1950)

Decipherment of Linear B
(1952 – 1953)

The National Security Agency is Founded
(November 4, 1952)

The Idea of a Genetic Code
(1953 – 1954)

The First Amino Acid Sequence of a Protein
(1955)

On Protein Synthesis
(September 1957)

The Genetic Code
(1961)

ASCII is Promulgated
(1963)

Public Key Cryptography
(1976)

The Unicode Universal Character Set
(August 29, 1988)

Encoded Sculpture
(November 3, 1990)

The First Intelligible Word from an Extinct South American Civilization?
(August 12, 2005)

The Genetic Code of Avian Flu Virus H5N1 is Deciphered
(October 5, 2005)

Decoding Printer Tracking Dots
(October 19, 2005)