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Code and ciphers: Julius Caesar, the Enigma and the internet

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5<br />

Two-letter <strong>ciphers</strong><br />

It may seem natural that a cipher, unlike a code, will have <strong>the</strong> property<br />

that each individual letter is separately enciphered <strong>and</strong> replaced by a<br />

single letter, or symbol, <strong>and</strong> this is indeed <strong>the</strong> case for many cipher<br />

systems. There are, however, encryption systems in which each plaintext<br />

letter becomes more than one letter in <strong>the</strong> cipher <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong>re are also o<strong>the</strong>r<br />

systems which encipher <strong>the</strong> text two (or more) letters at a time. An<br />

example of <strong>the</strong> first type is<br />

Monograph to digraph<br />

The alphabet is written into a 5� 5 square with one letter being omitted<br />

The omitted letter is usually J, which is replaced by I if required. The five<br />

rows of <strong>the</strong> square are identified by <strong>the</strong> letters A, B, C, D <strong>and</strong> E as also are<br />

<strong>the</strong> columns: see Table 5.1.<br />

Table 5.1<br />

A B C D E<br />

A A B C D E<br />

B F G H I K<br />

C L M N O P<br />

D Q R S T U<br />

E V W X Y Z<br />

Each letter in <strong>the</strong> plaintext is now replaced by its row <strong>and</strong> column<br />

letters so that, for example, M becomes CB. The resulting cipher text is<br />

<strong>the</strong>refore twice as long as <strong>the</strong> original plain <strong>and</strong> contains only <strong>the</strong> letters A<br />

to E.<br />

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