Nuts and Bolts: the internet and encryption.

We send a lot of important information through the wild and dangerous forests of the world wide web.

We may check that the long string of characters along the top of the screen begins https (the s stands for secure) but the fact remains that if you are going to send a secret message to someone then, okay, you can use some clever kind of code, but you'll still have to let the recipient know what the code is by sending it through the said wild and dangerous forests of the world wide web, and this presents an opportunity to thieves to break it.

Doesn't it?

Well, actually, no.

Imagine you want to send the Rajah's diamond to someone. You put it in a box and close it with a padlock with a combination lock. 

Then you send it to the Queen of Sheba.

Now, the Queen of Sheba can't open it because she doesn't know what the combination is, so what she does is to attach her own combination padlock to the box and she sends it back to you.

And what do you do? You take off your own padlock and send it back again, whereupon the Queen of Sheba opens her own padlock, takes out the Rajah's diamond, and sends a polite letter to the Rajah to thank him very much indeed, and does he fancy dinner next Tuesday week?

See? No combinations or codes sent, and yet everything was secure throughout the whole process.

Clever, eh?

And as that is the case, now I'm going to order myself a nice pair of shoes.

Word To Use Today: encryption. This word has only been around since the 1900s. The Greek word kruptein means to hide.