000 02260nam a2200205 a 4500
005 20251229182517.0
008 251229s2025##################000#0#eng##
020 _a9780684831305
_qhbk
041 _aeng
082 0 4 _a652.8
_bKAH
100 _aKahn, David
245 1 0 _aThe codebreakers : the comprehensive history of secret communication from ancient times to the internet
_c/ David Kahn
250 _a1st ed.
260 _aNew York
_bScribner
_c1996
300 _axviii, 1181 p.
_b: ill.
_c; 24 cm.
504 _aBib and Ref
520 _aMan has created codes to keep secrets and has broken codes to learn those secrets since the time of the Pharaohs. For 4,000 years, fierce battles have been waged between codemakers and codebreakers, and the story of these battles is civilization's secret history, the hidden account of how wars were won and lost, diplomatic intrigues foiled, business secrets stolen, governments ruined, computers hacked. From the XYZ Affair to the Dreyfus Affair, from the Gallic War to the Persian Gulf, from Druidic runes and the kaballah to outer space, from the Zimmermann telegram to Enigma to the Manhattan Project, codebreaking has shaped the course of human events to an extent beyond any easy reckoning. Once a government monopoly, cryptology today touches everybody. It secures the Internet, keeps e-mail private, maintains the integrity of cash machine transactions, and scrambles TV signals on unpaid-for channels. David Kahn's The Codebreakers takes the measure of what codes and codebreaking have meant in human history in a single comprehensive account, astonishing in its scope and enthralling in its execution. Hailed upon first publication as a book likely to become the definitive work of its kind, The Codebreakers has more than lived up to that prediction: it remains unsurpassed. With a brilliant new chapter that makes use of previously classified documents to bring the book thoroughly up to date, and to explore the myriad ways computer codes and their hackers are changing all of our lives, The Codebreakers is the skeleton key to a thousand thrilling true stories of intrigue, mystery, and adventure. It is a masterpiece of the historian's art.
650 _aCryptography History
942 _cENGLISH
999 _c605893
_d605893