Playfair cipher
Cifrado de Playfair
- Date
- 1854 · confidence high
- Place
- London, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Charles Wheatstone
- Field
- Communication
What it is
The first classical digraph (letter-pair) substitution cipher rather than a single-letter one, making it far more resistant to frequency analysis than simple substitution ciphers.
Invented by Charles Wheatstone but named 'Playfair' after Lord Playfair, who promoted its use.
What it led to
- Manual military ciphers used until World War II
- Advances in digraph cryptanalysis
Built on
- Bellaso cipher (misattributed to Vigenère)1553
- Simple substitution cipher
- Vigenère cipher