- Friedrich L. Bauer: "Decrypted Secrets: Methods and Maxims of Cryptology", 1st edition, 1997, Springer, ISBN-13: 978-3540604181
- Bengt Beckman: "Codebreakers: Arne Beurling and the Swedish Crypto Program During World War II", 2002, AMS, ISBN 0-8218-2889-4
Translated from the Swedish by Kjell-Ove Widman
Review by F.L. Bauer: http://www.ams.org/notices/200308/rev-bauer.pdf
Books focussing on the history of cryptology
Links with further information about the history of cryptology
- Zeittafel der Kryptologie (German only)
- Jenseits von Kahn -- Die verborgene Geschichte der Codebrecher (German only)
- Cryptography history by XRamp
- The History of Cryptography (from the "Virtual Exhibitions in Informatics" page of the University Klagenfurt)
- CQC History of Cryptography
- A Brief History of Cryptography
- A short history of crypto from the Crypto Machines Home page
- Cipher Machines Timeline
- Wikipedia Timeline of cryptography
- Frode Weierud's CryptoCellar - Cryptology and Its History
Time-table / time-travel through cryptography and cryptanalysis
This overview of the various cryptographic algorithms is a chronological history of cryptology, whose origins date back to the days of antiquity and which over time has undergone steady refinement of its methods. Please note that this table is by no means complete.
The first human writing dates back more than 6000 years. Encryption has been in existence for around 3000 years.
| c. 1900 BC | Non standard symbols were used in old Egypt. |
| c. 1500 BC | The Phoenicians developed an alphabet. |
| c. 1000 BC | Non standard symbols were used in old Mesopotamia. |
| c. 600 BC | In Palestine texts have been encrypted with the simple monoalphabetic substitution cipher Atbash. |
Read more: Time-table / time-travel through cryptography and cryptanalysis