A long, long time ago, nearly 4,000 years, in a land far, far away ancient cryptography was born. The Place? Egypt. It is there historians believe the technique was invented by priests as a character substitution for hieroglyphics. Then in Greece, it is believed the ancient Spartan military also relied on cryptography, though it’s not clear if it was used for encryption, authentication or to avoid bad omens. One certainly wonders!
Zoom ahead thousands of years later, all the way to the 1970’s when modern cryptography was born.
It came about in 1976 when Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman (unknown to many, it was originally conceptualized by Ralph Merkle) published a paper on key agreement protocol. The concepts discussed in the paper, New Directions in Cryptography, are still very much in use today, and form the genesis of public key cryptography. However, it is now believed that a British engineer, John Ellis had secretly invented public key cryptography in 1969. This information was classified until 1997.