The Codebreakers

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The Codebreakers - The Story of Secret Writing (ISBN 0684831309) is a book by David Kahn, published in 1967 comprehensively chronicling the history of cryptography from ancient Egypt to the time of its writing. The United States government attempted to have the book altered before publication, and there is even a story that an attempt was made to purchase its rights from the publisher in an attempt to prevent publicationTemplate:Fact. It is widely regarded as the best account of the history of cryptography up to its publication. William Crowell, former deputy director of the National Security Agency, was quoted in Newsday as saying "Before he (Kahn) came along, the best you could do was buy an explanatory book that usually was too technical and terribly dull." Template:Ref

Because of the year of its publication, the book did not cover most of the history concerning the breaking of the German Enigma machine (which became public knowledge only in the 1970s); nor did it cover the advent of strong cryptography in the public domain, beginning with the invention of public key cryptography and the specification of the Data Encryption Standard in the mid-1970s.

The book was republished in 1996, and this new edition includes an additional chapter briefly covering the events since the original publication; see the "Books on cryptography" article for other works which cover this later history in more detail.

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