Edouard Fleissner von Wostrowitz
Encyclopedia
Edouard Fleissner von Wostrowitz (1825–1888), also spelt Fleißner, is remembered as the author of a short book on cryptography and as the proponent of a modified Cardan grille
known as a turning grille. See Grille (cryptography)
He was born in Lemberg, the son of an Austrian cavalry officer, and was expected to follow a military career. After serving in the Chevaux-légeres Regiment Number 6, he was appointed Commandant of the Officer School at Ödenberg in 1871 and promoted to full colonel in 1872. Before retirement, at the end of 1874, he was ennobled and became Kommandant Oberst Edouard Freiherr von Fleißner von Wostrowitz.
His book Handbuch der Kryptographie was published in Vienna, in 1881. Jules Verne
popularised the turning grille in his novel Mathias Sandorf
, published in 1885, by using it as a plot device. Later, the German Army adopted turning grilles of various sizes during the First World War for immediate cipher traffic.
References to Fleißner are found in German, French, Italian and Spanish. Kahn and Gaines mention him in English. Kahn describes the turning grille in his standard work The Codebreakers but gives the name Fleissner only in relation to Jules Verne and the appearance of ciphers in literature.
Cardan grille
-History:In 1550, Girolamo Cardano , known in French as Jérôme Cardan, proposed a simple grid for writing hidden messages. He intended to cloak his messages inside an ordinary letter so that the whole would not appear to be a cipher at all....
known as a turning grille. See Grille (cryptography)
Grille (cryptography)
In the history of cryptography, a grille cipher was a technique for encrypting a plaintext by writing it onto a sheet of paper through a pierced sheet . The earliest known description is due to the polymath Girolamo Cardano in 1550...
He was born in Lemberg, the son of an Austrian cavalry officer, and was expected to follow a military career. After serving in the Chevaux-légeres Regiment Number 6, he was appointed Commandant of the Officer School at Ödenberg in 1871 and promoted to full colonel in 1872. Before retirement, at the end of 1874, he was ennobled and became Kommandant Oberst Edouard Freiherr von Fleißner von Wostrowitz.
His book Handbuch der Kryptographie was published in Vienna, in 1881. Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
popularised the turning grille in his novel Mathias Sandorf
Mathias Sandorf
Mathias Sandorf was an 1885 adventure book by French writer Jules Verne. It was first serialized in Le Temps in 1885, and it was Verne's epic Mediterranean adventure. It employs many of the devices that had served well in his earlier novels: islands, cryptograms, surprise revelations of identity,...
, published in 1885, by using it as a plot device. Later, the German Army adopted turning grilles of various sizes during the First World War for immediate cipher traffic.
References to Fleißner are found in German, French, Italian and Spanish. Kahn and Gaines mention him in English. Kahn describes the turning grille in his standard work The Codebreakers but gives the name Fleissner only in relation to Jules Verne and the appearance of ciphers in literature.