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Wadsworth's Cipher
Wadsworth's cipher, or Wheatstone's cipher, was a cipher invented by Decius Wadsworth, a Colonel in the United States Army Ordnance Corps. In 1817, he developed a progressive cipher system based on a 1790 design by Thomas Jefferson, establishing a method that was continuously improved upon and used until the end of World War II. Wadsworth's system involved a set of two disks, one inside the other, where the outer disk had the 26 letters of the alphabet and the numbers 2-8, and the inner disk had only the 26 letters. The disks were geared together at a ratio of 26:33. To encipher a message, the inner disk was turned until the desired letter was at the top position, with the number of turns required for the result transmitted as ciphertext. Due to the gearing, a ciphertext substitution for a character did not repeat until all 33 characters for the plaintext letter had been used. A similar device was invented by Charles Wheatstone Sir Charles Wheatstone FRS FRSE DCL LLD (6 F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decius Wadsworth (Colonel)
Decius Wadsworth (January 2, 1768 – November 8, 1821) was a Colonel in the U.S. Army before and during the War of 1812. He graduated from Yale College in 1785 with Honors. He was a renowned military organizer, engineer and inventor. In 1812, he was selected to be the 1st Chief of Ordnance for the new United States Army Ordnance Department. Family Decius Wadsworth was born in 1768 in Farmington, Connecticut, the eldest son of William Wadsworth, III and Mercy Clarke. He was a scion of the prominent Wadsworth family of Connecticut. He was a sixth generation descendant of William Wadsworth, an original founder of Hartford, Connecticut. He was a contemporary and relative of Jeremiah Wadsworth, James Wadsworth, William Wadsworth, and James Wadsworth. Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth, his second cousin, left Decius a handsome sum in his will in 1804. Decius never married. Military career In 1794, Decius Wadsworth was appointed by President George Washington as a captain in the Artille ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colonel
Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge of a regiment in an army. Modern usage varies greatly, and in some cases, the term is used as an honorific title that may have no direct relationship to military service. The rank of colonel is typically above the rank of lieutenant colonel. The rank above colonel is typically called brigadier, brigade general or brigadier general. In some smaller military forces, such as those of Monaco or the Vatican, colonel is the highest rank. Equivalent naval ranks may be called captain or ship-of-the-line captain. In the Commonwealth's air force ranking system, the equivalent rank is group captain. History and origins By the end of the late medieval period, a group of "companies" was referred to as a "column" of an army. According to Raymond Ol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Army Ordnance Corps
The United States Army Ordnance Corps, formerly the United States Army Ordnance Department, is a sustainment branch of the United States Army, headquartered at Fort Lee, Virginia. The broad mission of the Ordnance Corps is to supply Army combat units with weapons and ammunition, including at times their procurement and maintenance. Along with the Quartermaster Corps and Transportation Corps, it forms a critical component of the U.S. Army logistics system. The U.S. Army Ordnance Corps mission is to support the development, production, acquisition, and sustainment of weapon systems, ammunition, missiles, electronics, and ground mobility materiel during peace and war to provide combat power to the U.S. Army. The officer in charge of the branch for doctrine, training, and professional development purposes is the Chief of Ordnance. The current Chief of Ordnance is Brigadier General Michael B. Lalor. History Colonial period to War of Independence During the colonial era in Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the nation's second vice president of the United States, vice president under John Adams and the first United States Secretary of State, United States secretary of state under George Washington. The principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating Thirteen Colonies, American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation. He produced formative documents and decisions at state, national, and international levels. During the American Revolution, Jefferson represented Virginia in the Continental Congress that adopted the Declaration of Independence. As ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ciphertext
In cryptography, ciphertext or cyphertext is the result of encryption performed on plaintext using an algorithm, called a cipher. Ciphertext is also known as encrypted or encoded information because it contains a form of the original plaintext that is unreadable by a human or computer without the proper cipher to decrypt it. This process prevents the loss of sensitive information via hacking. Decryption, the inverse of encryption, is the process of turning ciphertext into readable plaintext. Ciphertext is not to be confused with codetext because the latter is a result of a code, not a cipher. Conceptual underpinnings Let m\! be the plaintext message that Alice wants to secretly transmit to Bob and let E_k\! be the encryption cipher, where _k\! is a cryptographic key. Alice must first transform the plaintext into ciphertext, c\!, in order to securely send the message to Bob, as follows: : c = E_k(m). \! In a symmetric-key system, Bob knows Alice's encryption key. Once the m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Wheatstone
Sir Charles Wheatstone FRS FRSE DCL LLD (6 February 1802 – 19 October 1875), was an English scientist and inventor of many scientific breakthroughs of the Victorian era, including the English concertina, the stereoscope (a device for displaying three-dimensional images), and the Playfair cipher (an encryption technique). However, Wheatstone is best known for his contributions in the development of the Wheatstone bridge, originally invented by Samuel Hunter Christie, which is used to measure an unknown electrical resistance, and as a major figure in the development of telegraphy. Life Charles Wheatstone was born in Barnwood, Gloucestershire. His father, W. Wheatstone, was a music-seller in the town, who moved to 128 Pall Mall, London, four years later, becoming a teacher of the flute. Charles, the second son, went to a village school, near Gloucester, and afterwards to several institutions in London. One of them was in Kennington, and kept by a Mrs. Castlemaine, who ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
