| Paolo Bonavoglia gave a talk on Venetian cryptography at this year’s Histocrypt, here’s the slide on the timeline Summary of the cryptography of the Republic of Venice ... - 1510 Prehistory : archival vacuum 1510-1578 The Golden age of codebreakers (Soro, Ludovici, Borghi, Marin)- Venice had the most effective team of code breakers, if indeed even the pope and the emperor asked the help of Venice in decrypting intercepted - 1578-1600 The Golden age of eipher designers (Franceschi, Partenio) -
They designed stronger ciphers, fearing that other states could have equally good code breakers. Franceschi proposed true ciphers, i.e., polyalphabetic ciphers like his cifra delle caselle. Partenio aimed instead at enhanced nomenclators with super-encryptions. 1600 - 1620 Interlude: indeed both ciphers were abandoned as too complicated and slow. A z10, a very simple cipher was in use. • 1620 - 1650 Medici's years: last attempts to reconcile safety with ease and speed of use. 1650 - 1797 The unstoppable decline |
The decline of Venice as an independent state for sure - did he talk about where things went with cryptography after that?
Quite interesting though... I would read a book about that. I lived in Padova for many years, which was the premier university of the Republic of Venice, so I wonder about what local connections there were there.