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Code Cracking for Kids: Secret Communications Throughout History, with 21 Codes and Ciphers (75)
People throughout history have written messages in code and ciphers to guard and pass along closely held secret information. Today, countries around the world enlist cryptanalysts to intercept and crack messages to keep our world safe. Code Cracking for Kids explores many aspects of cryptology, including famous people who used and invented codes and ciphers, such as Julius Caesar and Thomas Jefferson; codes used during wars, including the Enigma machine, whose cracking helped the Allies gather critical information on German intelligence in World War II; and work currently being done by the government, such as in the National Security Agency. Readers also will learn about unsolved codes and ciphers throughout history, codes used throughout the world today, though not often recognized, and devices used over the years by governments and their spies to conceal information. Code Cracking for Kids includes hands-on activities that allow kids to replicate early code devices, learn several different codes and ciphers to encode and decode messages and hide a secret message inside a hollow egg.
144 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2019
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8 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 31, 2020
Review by James, age 10, 1/31/20
This book is about code cracking throughout history. This book covers codes and code cracking from 499 BC when they would shave a slave's head, write a message, and wait for the slave's hair to grow back, and then send him to the person who they were communicating with, to 1977 when the first public key cipher was created.
One code - or more accurately, coding machine - I found interesting was the Enigma cipher. This was an almost uncrackable coding machine. But a German person got very mad and to get revenge on the Germans he sold the secrets to the Allies, and they built a Enigma machine, which was a little bit bigger because it did one other thing: it figured out which of the thousands of ciphers had been used and decoded the message in less than three hours. (Poland was invaded a week after they smuggled their machine out.)
Another story I found interesting was the Kryptos sculpture. It's a sculpture in front of the CIA world headquarters that has four coded messages on it, one of which remains unsolved to this date. The statue went up in 1988.
I really liked this book because now I can make coded messages and it counted as my history lesson.
This book is about code cracking throughout history. This book covers codes and code cracking from 499 BC when they would shave a slave's head, write a message, and wait for the slave's hair to grow back, and then send him to the person who they were communicating with, to 1977 when the first public key cipher was created.
One code - or more accurately, coding machine - I found interesting was the Enigma cipher. This was an almost uncrackable coding machine. But a German person got very mad and to get revenge on the Germans he sold the secrets to the Allies, and they built a Enigma machine, which was a little bit bigger because it did one other thing: it figured out which of the thousands of ciphers had been used and decoded the message in less than three hours. (Poland was invaded a week after they smuggled their machine out.)
Another story I found interesting was the Kryptos sculpture. It's a sculpture in front of the CIA world headquarters that has four coded messages on it, one of which remains unsolved to this date. The statue went up in 1988.
I really liked this book because now I can make coded messages and it counted as my history lesson.
May 16, 2021
I learned a lot about codes and ciphers and enjoyed the code breaking puzzles.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews