Take China as an example, in ancient times, people use flames smoke signals to pass the war news. And then, a people named Gongliang Zeng collected the most common combat situations and compiled them to numbers. Before the General expedited, the general and Military chain of command would reach an agreement about a piece of poem with many words. If something happened in the battle, general would search the combat situations number and choose the word which has the same number in the poem. Then he wrote down the word and sent a soldier to pass the information.
For instance, if the combat situation is numbered 4, so the 4th word in the poem is the key to pass the information.
Cryptology is not far away from us. In recent days, for example, we need to use password plate to open our mailbox in Dickinson College. It maybe a little bit inconvenient, however, it is necessary for us to protect our secret.
The use of cryptography in ancient Chinese combat is very interesting. I thought it was a very creative way to pass information throughout the war. Also, I agree that cryptology is not far away from us. Just about every time we use a computer or play an online game, some form of cryptography is being used to protect us. Cryptography is more important now than it ever was.
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