Home > Author > Simon Singh
81 " the development of a fully operational quantum computer would imperil our personal privacy, destroy electronic commerce and demolish the concept of national security. A quantum computer would jeopardize the stability of the world. "
― Simon Singh , The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
82 " It is quite possible that British Intelligence demanded that Babbage keep his work secret, thus providing them with a nine-year head start over the rest of the world. "
83 " French listening posts learned to recognize a radio operator’s fist. Once encrypted, a message is sent in Morse code, as a series of dots and dashes, and each operator can be identified by his pauses, the speed of transmission, and the relative lengths of dots and dashes. A fist is the equivalent of a recognizable style of handwriting. "
84 " Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were guilty of unjustified wiretaps, and President John F. Kennedy conducted dubious wiretaps in the first month of his presidency. "
85 " During a security briefing at the White House, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld breaks some tragic news: “Mr President, three Brazilian soldiers were killed yesterday while supporting U.S. troops.” “My God!” shrieks President George W. Bush, and he buries his head in his hands. He remains stunned and silent for a full minute. Eventually, he looks up, takes a deep breath, and asks Rumsfeld: “How many is a brazillion? "
― Simon Singh , The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets
86 " The three Britons had to sit back and watch as their discoveries were rediscovered by Diffie, Hellman, Merkle, Rivest, Shamir and Adleman over the next three years. "
87 " Chinese wrote messages on fine silk, which was then scrunched into a tiny ball and covered in wax. The messenger would then swallow the ball of wax. "
88 " He was a rather quirky worker, and he didn’t really fit into the day-to-day business of GCHQ. But in terms of coming up with new ideas he was quite exceptional. You had to sort through some rubbish sometimes, but he was very innovative and always willing to challenge the orthodoxy. "
89 " The first microdot to be spotted by the FBI was in 1941, following a tip-off that the Americans should look for a tiny gleam from the surface of a letter, indicative of smooth film. "
90 " We would be in real trouble if everybody in GCHQ was like him, but we can tolerate a higher proportion of such people than most organizations. We put up with a number of people like him. Figure 66 James Ellis. (photo credit 6.4) One of Ellis’s greatest qualities was his breadth of knowledge. "
91 " first ever military cryptographic device, the Spartan scytale, dating back to the fifth century B.C. The scytale is a wooden staff around which a strip of leather or parchment is wound, "
92 " The German military were equally unenthusiastic, because they were oblivious to the damage caused by their insecure ciphers during the Great War. For example, they had been led to believe that the Zimmermann telegram had been stolen by American spies in Mexico, and so they blamed that failure on Mexican security. They still did not realize that the telegram had in fact been intercepted and deciphered by the British, and that the Zimmermann debacle was actually a failure of German cryptography. "
93 " Because a quantum computer deals with 1’s and 0’s that are in a quantum superposition, they are called quantum bits, or qubits (pronounced “cubits”). The advantage of qubits becomes even clearer when we consider more particles. "
94 " diagonally polarized photons are in a quantum quandary when confronted by a vertical Polaroid filter. "
95 " half of them at random will be blocked, and half will pass through, and those that do pass through will be reoriented with a vertical polarization. "
96 " significance of the key, as opposed to the algorithm, is an enduring principle of cryptography. It was definitively stated in 1883 by the Dutch linguist Auguste Kerckhoffs von Nieuwenhof in his book La Cryptographie militaire: “Kerckhoffs’ Principle: The security of a cryptosystem must not depend on keeping secret the crypto-algorithm. The security depends only on keeping secret the key. "
97 " 250 qubits, it is possible to represent roughly 1075 combinations, which is greater than the number of atoms in the universe. If it were possible to achieve the appropriate superposition with 250 particles, then a quantum computer could perform 1075 simultaneous computations, "
98 " The letters a and l are the most common in Arabic, partly because of the definite article al-, whereas the letter j appears only a tenth as frequently. "
99 " What is the least number of weights that can be used on a set of scales to weigh any whole number of kilograms from 1 to 40? "
― Simon Singh , Fermat's Enigma
100 " For decades, ENIAC, not Colossus, was considered the mother of all computers. "