Secret writings have a long tradition, but with the invention of technical transmission media, the art of cryptography gains an even greater importance. Ciphers bridge the gap between words and numbers, thus leading to what we call data processing.

• Tradition: how is the secret passed on through the ages? Is it Cryptology or Cryptography we are studying here, hermeneutic art of the arcane or science, technology in history or the history of technology?
  
• What is the gain, the accumulation, of meaning, of importance, though technology?
  
• What exactly is the gap between words and numbers which the cipher will bridge? And why words and not letters?

Questions, in a word, of nomenclature, or name-calling, leading to "data processing". What is the secret of an inheritance which will be held responsible for a difference between secret writing and data processing?

These and other decisions to be made for further inquiry will be represented in the pages of this website, in the mode of decoding, unpacking, perhaps also reinscribing and modifying the program which the course description set out - mindful of the fact that it was optimized for speed, convenience, and other criteria.