Appendix 2: Timeline of significant contributions to information theory and cryptography

Patrick McConnell

This appendix shows the historical timeline of significant contributions to information theory and cryptography, concentrating on the modern era – ie, post-WWII (see Chapter 14 for a short overview of classical cryptography). There are many histories of cryptography, and IT in particular, but here we are interested in those innovations that relate to the subject of digital money. Nor is the timeline comprehensive, but instead attempts to identify key events in history that leads us to the innovations that are happening in finance, information technology and cryptography, and changing the financial industry.

ADVANCES IN CRYPTOGRAPHY

The key trends to note in Table A2.1 are the explosions in innovations in both cryptography and IT propelled by investments in both topics just after WWII. In particular, driven by significant increases in computing power just after the war, was a golden period for modern cryptography, culminating in the development of public/private key cryptography (PPKC) by academics Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman (RSA). This asymmetric approach to cryptography ruled unchallenged until 1994 when a US academic, Peter Shor, showed that algorithms such as RSA