Re: concerning Ben Franklin

[Declan McCullagh <declan@pathfinder.com>]

This is one of the point that I address in my article in the February 1997
issue of "Internet Underground" magazine (to which I am a contributing
editor). Here's an excerpt, since the magazine is just starting to hit the
stands.

---
The debate swirling through Capitol Hill conference rooms and the
corridors of the White House revolves around one basic question: What role
should the government play in regulating encryption?

The founding fathers might be startled by the byzantine rules. After all,
some revolutionaries were cryptographers themselves. Benjamin Franklin in
1781 crafted a substitution cipher based on a 682-character French phrase.
James Madison created a code replacing words with two- and three-digit
numbers that he used until 1793.

But by far the most remarkable cryptologist of the Revolutionary War was
the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, who
between 1790 and 1800 invented a cipher system so far ahead of its time
that it remained in use even into the late 20th century.
---

The Codebreakers is also a good source.

-Declan


>I was reading one of the posts in the thread reguarding sone stolen object
>in Miami, the one reffering to the locks of the boxes, and it got me thinking.
>Ben Franklin was a revolutionary, scientist, inventor, publisher, statesman,
>and bookburner (according to F451).  Perhaps he should be considered to be a
>cypherpunk, not that he necessarily knew anything about crypto, but because
>he was interested in many of the same ideals.  It is my belief that were he
>alive today, he would be on this list.  If the work of fiction referred to
>above, and in another recent post, is accurate in its reference to Franklin,
>then he would seem to have had the same solution to net pollution, burn it.
>Rather than considering Ben Franklin the first fireman, I would like to
>think of him as an early breed of cypherpunk.  By this I consider cypherpunk
>to be interested in the subject, and its outcome, and a cryptographer to be
>just one faction of cypherpunk.  Merely my opinion.
>Does anyone know whether or not Mr. Franklin may have played with code as
>well?  All of my sources were assimilated into my understanding of the man
>several years ago, and at the time crypto was less in the public eye than it
>is now.



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