The first chapter of Singh’s The Code Book is packed with historical examples of cryptography. The Greeks, Persians, Arabs, French, and English, to name a few, were just some of the infinite number of societies and civilizations of which cryptography was crucial to their development. However, most of the examples described did involve people in positions of power. Kings, queens, nobles, and military leaders of all types have had to use cryptography to defend or expand their nations; clearly, cryptography has been crucial to changing history.
Despite the importance of these examples, I do believe that there has been a need for cryptography since the dawn of written language. I can’t imagine that cryptography was only used by well-resourced people; there has always been a need for encryption and secrecy, even if it’s on the most rudimentary level. Perhaps these are the only examples that survived, or perhaps Singh chose to include them because of their dramatic nature – after all, he does need to entice the reader somehow. It would be foolish to say that cryptography requires exceptional resources.
Yes, the most theatrical and interesting stories usually include a plot, some characters, and a dramatic, dire consequence that will result if the code is decrypted. But we can’t discount the more simple, day-to-day interactions that may have required people to encrypt their messages, like a potter who may have needed to protect his or her recipe for glaze, or a citizen who wanted to hide the contents of a letter from their government. I can’t imagine that examples such as these, though less exciting, didn’t exist before the stories of kings, queens, armies, and wars.
