On Saturday, December 15, 2018, 11:10:46 PM PST, grarpamp
   <grarpamp@gmail.com> wrote:
   [1]https://www.wired.com/1993/02/crypto-rebels/
   Author: Steven Levy
   security 02.01.93 12:00 pm
   Crypto Rebels
   It's the FBIs, NSAs, and Equifaxes of the world versus a swelling
   movement of Cypherpunks, civil libertarians, and millionaire hackers.
   [snip]
   >By 1977, three members of this new community created a set of
   algorithms that implemented the Diffie-Hellman scheme. Called RSA for
   its founders—MIT scientists Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman—it offered
   encryption that was likely to be stronger than the Data Encryption
   Standard (DES), a government-approved alternative that does not use
   public keys. The actual strength of key-based cryptographic systems
   rests largely in the size of the key—in other words, how many bits of
   information make up the key. The larger the key, the harder it is to
   break the code. While DES, which was devised at IBM's research lab,
   limits key size to 56 bits, RSA keys could be any size. (The trade-off
   was that bigger keys are unwieldy, and RSA runs much more slowly than
   DES.) But DES had an added burden: Rumors abounded that the NSA had
   forced IBM to intentionally weaken the system so that the government
   could break DES-encoded messages. RSA did not have that stigma. (The
   NSA has denied these rumors.)
   We have since learned that what became the RSA system started out by
   being invented by British GCHQ employee Clifford
   Cocks.  [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Cocks
   "Clifford Christopher Cocks [3]CB [4]FRS (born 28 December 1950) is a
   British mathematician and [5]cryptographer. In 1973, while working at
   the United Kingdom [6]Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), he
   invented a [7]public key cryptography algorithm equivalent to what
   would become (in 1978) the [8]RSA algorithm.

   The idea was [9]classified information and his insight remained hidden
   for 24 years, despite being independently invented
   by [10]Rivest, [11]Shamir, and [12]Adleman in
   1977.^[13][4]^[14][5] Public-key cryptography using [15]prime
   factorisation is now part of nearly every Internet
   transaction.^[16][6]^[17][7]
   × (BUTTON)
   [end of quote from Wikipedia.]
   I, Jim Bell, had my "Forrest Gump" moment, I believe during the first
   days of February 1977.  Very soon after my return to the MIT campus, I
   was walking through the hallways of Building 2, the Mathematics
   Department.  Posted, behind glass, were what I now believe was a
   statement of the RSA system. I think they had posted it in order to
   irrevocably make it no longer secret.
   I suppose if I wanted to pump up my credentials, I could say that I
   immediately recognized the importance of this revelation.
   Unfortunately, my reaction (if put into text) was far closer to
   "Huh???".
                   Jim Bell

References

   1. https://www.wired.com/1993/02/crypto-rebels/
   2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Cocks
   3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Bath
   4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow_of_the_Royal_Society
   5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographer
   6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Headquarters
   7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_cryptography
   8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(algorithm)
   9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information
  10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Rivest
  11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shamir
  12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Adleman
  13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Cocks#cite_note-4
  14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Cocks#cite_note-5
  15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_factorisation
  16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Cocks#cite_note-6
  17. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Cocks#cite_note-7