The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group The Code Book Major Keary

The CD version of The Code Book is available from the Melb PC office as a special - as part of the Monthly CD and the cost is just $2.

Simon Singh, Ph.D. (in physics) is a science journalist and television producer.

Published in 1999, The Code Book was soon followed by The Science of Secrecy, a more formal text that became a Channel Four documentary. Simon Singh is an articulate communicator who has combined that skill with his background in science to produce books that are easy to read, yet maintain the technical integrity of his subject.

The Code Book CD "largely follows the structure of The Code Book, with chapters that focus on the birth of cryptography, Victorian ciphers, World Wars I and II, the Information Age and Quantum Cryptography. Each section includes history, interactive tools, explanations, animations and video clips from the Channel Four series The Science of Secrecy". The CD contains permission for it to be copied, especially for the purpose of teaching. Most school children have an intrinsic interest in codes and ciphers because of the topic's association with spies and all that stuff. The CD has been designed for both a general audience and for education, using the subject matter to foster an interest in maths and history.

The content is HTML-based and designed for use with Microsoft Internet Explorer, which I don't use. It runs under Mozilla with the exception of the video clips, which don't play on cue, but they play properly when activated as individual files. Having viewed the clips as stand-alone items I'm not missing much - they are interesting, but not vital.

The important thing for those who use Mozilla is that the interactive examples, which illustrate each cryptosystem, do work. They are entertaining and informative, and should be fascinating to children. The explanation of modular arithmetic is very well done.

Encryption is now a vital part of digital communication and computer users at all levels should have some awareness of how it works. The CD serves that purpose very well, making no assumptions of any technical background in crypto. The explanations, with interactive examples, of how public key systems and RSA work are the best I have seen for lay readers. Not to be missed.