The Encryption Pioneer Who Was Written Out of History 238
nk497 writes "Clifford Cocks is one of three British men who developed an encryption system while working for the UK government in the early 1970s, but was forced to keep the innovation quiet for national security reasons. Just a few years later, their Public Encryption Key was developed separately by US researchers at Stanford and MIT, and eventually evolved into the RSA encryption algorithm, which now secures billions of transactions on the internet every day. 'The first I knew about [the US discovery] was when I read about it in Scientific American. I opened it one lunchtime and saw a description and thought, "Ah, that's what we did,"' he said. 'You don't go into the business to get external credit and recognition — quite the opposite. Quite honestly, the main reaction was one of complete surprise that this had actually been discovered outside.' The UK trio have now won recognition for their accomplishment in the form of the Milestone Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers."
Re:Nice achievement but ... (Score:5, Informative)
That seems to be exactly Cocks' stance, that it's an occupational hazard of doing secret work that other people will independently invent the same thing and you can't claim credit.
Re:Nice achievement but ... (Score:3, Informative)
It need not be even their decision (eventhough here it is) - you create a product which is useful for the military, and say you try to patent it - for selling it - as per the official secrets act, the govt can take this idea/product and use it - and ask the implementor not to mention to anyone. From then on the guy cannot even publish it.
The govt does not give out proper compensation too. So it is not always voluntary.
There in Knuth, so not "written out of history" (Score:3, Informative)
Knuth's TAOCP, Volume 2, Third Edition, Page 407:
"Historical note: It was revealed in 1998 that Clifford Cocks had considered encoding messages by the transformation $x^{pq} mod pq$ already in 1973, but his work was kept secret".
And that feels like the correct amount of recognition.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Informative)
LCDs was done by Austrian, French, UK, USA, and Swiss. Basically, different aspects of it were discovered by various ppl.
Exactly HOW was RSA appropriated? UK kept the tech to themselves, and the Americans did not know about it. Or are you saying that RSA crept into MI6 and stole the ideas?
The core of ALL home computers were American designed and developed. Zx80 and MOS were very American.
The web was based on SGML which was GML from where? IBM in America. Hypertext comes from Ted Nelson, American. And how did America 'Appropriate' it? Last I checked, it was EVERYWHERE.
And as to American idol, I agree. It is yours. PLEASE, PLEASE, I beg you, TAKE IT BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY.
The truth is, that the west was powerful because we WORKED together and were not aiming bombs at each other. Our societies worked together, rather than trying to fight each. We need to get back to that.
Re:They have a headstart (Score:4, Informative)
The claim that "the British empire wanted to keep the 13 colonies in oder to improve the lives of poor, Blacks, and Native Americans" was never made, so ascribing it to someone else seems just a little ridiculous.
Britain abolished slavery decades before the United States, so clearly there's one group who would have been better off under British rule.
Re:Me too! (Score:1, Informative)
what about Calculus. Leibnitz and Newton within months of each other. Newton came up with it first, but didn't publish, then Leibnitz published, and Newton got annoyed, published, claimed he was first and there was a big kerfuffle.
In the end we actually use Leibnitz notation for calculus, even though most people don't know who he was, and think Newton invented it.
Certain people in college kept telling me that it was invented in Arabia long before those men were born. Eventually I grew skeptical.
You're thinking of Algebra.