20-08-2025, 08:34 AM
One must consider that mathematical "inventions", especially simple ones like Vigenère ciphers, are not necessarily invented once and then spread around. Any such idea may be "invented" and lost many times before it spread wide enough to become "permanent".
The Babylonians used a positional number notation, including a zero digit (and floating-point numbers) more than 3000 years ago. The Maya invented the concept again maybe 1500 years ago. But those ideas were lost in time (mainly because of the influence of language: in Latin the number 2222 is said with four different words "duomilia ducenti viginti duo", so it was natural for the Romans to use different symbols for each of those words.)
(And one does not say "I bought zero sheep" but "I did not buy any sheep", and that is why people have always considered the number zero to be an advanced concept, not even a "natural number" -- even though children can lean the meaning of "zero candies" more easily than that of "two candies"...)
Most math "inventions" were probably "invented" many times and then immediately lost because the idea did not spread beyond the inventor, or maybe a couple other people. And, in most of those cases, all records of the invention were lost, or are collecting mold in some remote library, ignored or misnderstood.
The point is that one should not dismiss an encryption method just because it was not widely used in the early 1400s. The VMS Author may have invented it, then failed to tell the world about it...
(That said, I must clarify that I believe that the VMS is not encrypted at all.)
All the best, --jorge
The Babylonians used a positional number notation, including a zero digit (and floating-point numbers) more than 3000 years ago. The Maya invented the concept again maybe 1500 years ago. But those ideas were lost in time (mainly because of the influence of language: in Latin the number 2222 is said with four different words "duomilia ducenti viginti duo", so it was natural for the Romans to use different symbols for each of those words.)
(And one does not say "I bought zero sheep" but "I did not buy any sheep", and that is why people have always considered the number zero to be an advanced concept, not even a "natural number" -- even though children can lean the meaning of "zero candies" more easily than that of "two candies"...)
Most math "inventions" were probably "invented" many times and then immediately lost because the idea did not spread beyond the inventor, or maybe a couple other people. And, in most of those cases, all records of the invention were lost, or are collecting mold in some remote library, ignored or misnderstood.
The point is that one should not dismiss an encryption method just because it was not widely used in the early 1400s. The VMS Author may have invented it, then failed to tell the world about it...
(That said, I must clarify that I believe that the VMS is not encrypted at all.)
All the best, --jorge