Talk:Wadsworth's cipher

Serious problems

I would like to mention two issues with this article.

Firstly, regarding its first reference (cited as "A Short History of Cryptography", Fred Cohen, 1995; but that is actually only one chapter of an entire on-line book.) The entire second paragraph of this article is copied almost verbatim from Dr. Cohen's copyrighted article. Only a few words are modifed here and there, such as replacing "several" with "a few".

Second, the actual description of the cipher seems to copy an error in Dr. Cohen's article. Specifically,

To encipher a message, the inner disk was turned until the desired letter was at the top position, with the number of turns required for the result transmitted as ciphertext. (Emphasis added.)

This description frankly makes little sense. Not only is it cumbersome, but it does not allow a unique decipherment. It also leaves the second disk unused! Further, it is completely unlike the operation of the Wheatstone cryptograph, even though all sources agree that the two instruments are almost identical (differing only in the size of the larger disk.) In Wheatstone's machine, once the inner disk has been turned, the ciphertext is simply read off from the index on the outer disk, precisely as you might expect. (See, for example, [1].)

Unfortunately, the only source I can find which purports to accurately examine and describe a Wadsworth cipher machine, is behind a very expensive paywall. -- 202.63.39.58 (talk) 11:28, 26 February 2013 (UTC)