first edition Hardcover
1561 · Paris
by CRYPTOGRAPHY. OCCULT SCIENCE. PAPER INSTRUMENTS. Trithemius, Johannes (1462-1516); Collange, Gabriel de (1524-1572), translator and author
Paris: [Benoît Prévost for] Jacques Kerver, 1561. FIRST FRENCH EDITION -AND THE FIRST VERNACULAR TRANSLATION- OF THE FOUNDATIONAL WORK ON CRYPTOGRAPHY, EXPANDED BY THE TRANSLATOR. WITH THE FIRST EDITION of COLLANGE'S "PLANESPHERIC TABLES AND FIGURES" FOR ENCRYPTION AND DECIPHERMENT. Hardcover. Fine. A fine, unsophisticated copy in contemporary limp vellum (soiled and little rumpled.) Partly printed in red, the book includes 13 spherical woodcut diagrams with movable parts (volvelles). The volvelles, beautifully ornamented with masks, animals and allegorical figures. The large ornamental woodcut title page border was designed especially for the edition; the translator's portrait at age 37 is to be found on the verso. The title border and the portrait are repeated twice for the appended texts "Clavicule, et interpretation sur le contenu és cinq livres de Polygraphie" and "Tables et figures planispheriques.". A very appealing copy with some signs of wear and minor dog-earing. The opening leaves are a bit frayed at the edges; the title is soiled along the fore-edge and has a small hole in the upper margin just within the woodcut border. Early ownership inscriptions have been scored through. Tear in blank corner of Leaf A1, light stains in gathering Vv; outer margin of leaf 173 cut close, just shaving the woodcut. There is a stain along the fore-edge of the text block that does not impact the surface of the leaves aside from the final two gatherings, where it creeps into the white margin. Final leaf soiled and with marginal stains. Occasional light blemishes, light stain to upper, inner margin of first section. On the whole, a clean copy, all 13 volvelles intact and functioning.
This is the important first edition of Gabriel de Collange's French translation of Trithemius' "Polygraphiae Libri sex"(Oppeneim, 1518), the cornerstone of modern cryptography, which includes Collange's expanded version of Trithemius' "key" ("clavicula") for penetrating and using the text. The book also features the first edition of Collange's important "Tables et figures planispheriques", "for the universal understanding of all writing", featuring 13 full-page moveable wheels for composing and deciphering any and all coded messages.
The book marks an important leap forward in the printing of cryptographic texts. Trithemius had adapted the concept of the volvelle, an analog combinatory text generator created by Raymond Lull, for writing and deciphering codes. Trithemius described this method in his "Polygraphia" but the concept was only depicted in static tables in the 1518 and 1550 editions of his book. With his moveable "tables and planispheres", Collange has provided the code-writer and decipherer with the actual working device.
"Collange has added 13 full-page volvelles, each divided into 12 sectors forming a wheel with 12 spokes. On each bar are listed 12 letters of the alphabet in their usual order but beginning at different points. The disc can be rotated under a fixed vertical strip which from top to bottom gives the ordinary alphabet from a to m and n to z, &. By turning the disc to a different section against the fixed vertical, one has a simple means of finding a key to a cipher. By means of this French work, Trithemius' text paved the way for all subsequent cryptography". (Sten G. Lindberg, "Mobiles in Books. Volvelles, Inserts, Pyramids, Divinations, and Children's Games [="Mobiler I Böcker, Volveller Spåddomar Etc." Bokvännen 5-6 (1978)]." Translated by William S. Mitchell. The Private Library Series 3, 2:49−82).
This is the first vernacular translation of Trithemius' work. The alphabets and diagrams of cabalistic signs anticipate Blaise de Vigenere's "Traicté des chiffres ou Secretes manières d'escrire" published twenty-five years later (1586).
Johann of Trittenheim (1462-1516), abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of Spannheim, exerted considerable influence on Hermetic thought of the period. The codes he invented and described in this book, notably the "Ave Maria" cipher which takes up the bulk of the work (each word representing a letter, with consecutive tables making it possible to so arrange a code that it will read as a prayer), and the "square table", a sophisticated system of coding using multiple alphabets, were used for centuries.
Trithemius' Tableau and polyalphabetic encipherment:
"In Book V [of Trithemius' book] appears, for the first time, the square table, or tableau. This is the elemental form of polyalphabetic substitution, for it exhibits all at once all the cipher alphabets in a particular system. These are usually all the same sequence of letters, but shifted to different positions in relation to the plaintext alphabet, as in [Leon Battista] Alberti's disk the inner alphabet assumed different positions in regard to the outer alphabet. The tableau sets them out in orderly fashion-the alphabets of the successive positions laid out in rows one below the other, each alphabet shifted one place to the left of the one above. Each row thus offers a different set of cipher substitutes to the letters of the plaintext alphabet at the top. Since there can be only as many rows as there are letters in the alphabet, the tableau is square.
"The simplest tableau is one that uses the normal alphabet in various positions as the cipher alphabets. Each cipher alphabet produces, in other words, a Caesar substitution. This is precisely Trithemius' tableau, which he called his "tabula recta."
"Trithemius used this tableau for his polyalphabetic encipherment, and in the simplest manner possible. He enciphered the first letter with the first alphabet, the second with the second, and so on. (He gave no separate plaintext alphabet, but the normal alphabet at the top can serve.) Thus a plaintext beginning Hunc caveto virum . . . became HXPF GFBMCZ FUEiB. ... In this particular message, he switched to another alphabet after 24 letters, but in another example he followed the more normal procedure of repeating the alphabets over and over again in groups of 24. The great advantage of this procedure over Alberti's is that a new alphabet is brought into play with each letter. Alberti shifted alphabets only after three or four words. Thus the ciphertext would mirror the obvious pattern of repeated letters of a word like Papa ("Pope"), or in English, attack, and the cryptanalyst could seize upon this reflection to break into the cryptogram. The letter-by-letter encipherment obliterates this clue."(Kahn, Codebreakers, p. 91 ff.). (Inventory #: 5011)
This is the important first edition of Gabriel de Collange's French translation of Trithemius' "Polygraphiae Libri sex"(Oppeneim, 1518), the cornerstone of modern cryptography, which includes Collange's expanded version of Trithemius' "key" ("clavicula") for penetrating and using the text. The book also features the first edition of Collange's important "Tables et figures planispheriques", "for the universal understanding of all writing", featuring 13 full-page moveable wheels for composing and deciphering any and all coded messages.
The book marks an important leap forward in the printing of cryptographic texts. Trithemius had adapted the concept of the volvelle, an analog combinatory text generator created by Raymond Lull, for writing and deciphering codes. Trithemius described this method in his "Polygraphia" but the concept was only depicted in static tables in the 1518 and 1550 editions of his book. With his moveable "tables and planispheres", Collange has provided the code-writer and decipherer with the actual working device.
"Collange has added 13 full-page volvelles, each divided into 12 sectors forming a wheel with 12 spokes. On each bar are listed 12 letters of the alphabet in their usual order but beginning at different points. The disc can be rotated under a fixed vertical strip which from top to bottom gives the ordinary alphabet from a to m and n to z, &. By turning the disc to a different section against the fixed vertical, one has a simple means of finding a key to a cipher. By means of this French work, Trithemius' text paved the way for all subsequent cryptography". (Sten G. Lindberg, "Mobiles in Books. Volvelles, Inserts, Pyramids, Divinations, and Children's Games [="Mobiler I Böcker, Volveller Spåddomar Etc." Bokvännen 5-6 (1978)]." Translated by William S. Mitchell. The Private Library Series 3, 2:49−82).
This is the first vernacular translation of Trithemius' work. The alphabets and diagrams of cabalistic signs anticipate Blaise de Vigenere's "Traicté des chiffres ou Secretes manières d'escrire" published twenty-five years later (1586).
Johann of Trittenheim (1462-1516), abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of Spannheim, exerted considerable influence on Hermetic thought of the period. The codes he invented and described in this book, notably the "Ave Maria" cipher which takes up the bulk of the work (each word representing a letter, with consecutive tables making it possible to so arrange a code that it will read as a prayer), and the "square table", a sophisticated system of coding using multiple alphabets, were used for centuries.
Trithemius' Tableau and polyalphabetic encipherment:
"In Book V [of Trithemius' book] appears, for the first time, the square table, or tableau. This is the elemental form of polyalphabetic substitution, for it exhibits all at once all the cipher alphabets in a particular system. These are usually all the same sequence of letters, but shifted to different positions in relation to the plaintext alphabet, as in [Leon Battista] Alberti's disk the inner alphabet assumed different positions in regard to the outer alphabet. The tableau sets them out in orderly fashion-the alphabets of the successive positions laid out in rows one below the other, each alphabet shifted one place to the left of the one above. Each row thus offers a different set of cipher substitutes to the letters of the plaintext alphabet at the top. Since there can be only as many rows as there are letters in the alphabet, the tableau is square.
"The simplest tableau is one that uses the normal alphabet in various positions as the cipher alphabets. Each cipher alphabet produces, in other words, a Caesar substitution. This is precisely Trithemius' tableau, which he called his "tabula recta."
"Trithemius used this tableau for his polyalphabetic encipherment, and in the simplest manner possible. He enciphered the first letter with the first alphabet, the second with the second, and so on. (He gave no separate plaintext alphabet, but the normal alphabet at the top can serve.) Thus a plaintext beginning Hunc caveto virum . . . became HXPF GFBMCZ FUEiB. ... In this particular message, he switched to another alphabet after 24 letters, but in another example he followed the more normal procedure of repeating the alphabets over and over again in groups of 24. The great advantage of this procedure over Alberti's is that a new alphabet is brought into play with each letter. Alberti shifted alphabets only after three or four words. Thus the ciphertext would mirror the obvious pattern of repeated letters of a word like Papa ("Pope"), or in English, attack, and the cryptanalyst could seize upon this reflection to break into the cryptogram. The letter-by-letter encipherment obliterates this clue."(Kahn, Codebreakers, p. 91 ff.). (Inventory #: 5011)