“Forewarned is forearmed” - this proverb has not lost its relevance at all times. Especially when it comes to war. Here intelligence is simply necessary: you know the plans of the enemy - consider, won the battle. And you need to keep in touch with your own - so that the right hand understands what the left is doing. But no matter how good the pigeon and falcon mail are, they cannot be called reliable. There is only one way out: to encrypt messages. Fortunately, even ancient inventors have developed many coded communication devices.
SCREAM, DO NOT SCREAM …
While the war was going on between the tribes, the powerful vocal cords of the tribal leader, who gave orders to his soldiers, were enough to transmit information. But when the number of troops began to exceed a thousand, then here it is - shout, do not shout … And then in Ancient Egypt they came up with the idea of transmitting orders of the commander in a chain. But the "broken phone" is good only as a child's play. If we are talking about the fate of the army, then any inaccuracy can cause defeat. After all, the human factor has not been canceled.
Later, army commands began to be transmitted with the help of musical instruments - drums, horns, etc., since they sounded much louder than a human voice, and did not distort information. But times changed, information became more complicated, so there was a need for more efficient types of communication.
HALF AN HOUR AND TWO TORCHES
And then fire and smoke came to the rescue. Homer also told how the inhabitants of the besieged city managed to inform the allies about the misfortune that had befallen them with the help of signal lights. And in Demosthenes one can find a story about the Athenians, who gathered the inhabitants of Attica "under arms" by setting fire to market tents from willow twigs.
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The next step for the development of the "fire telegraph" was the creation of a system of watchtowers. A lighted fire on one of them served as a signal to the sentry on the neighboring tower: act like me! Light travels faster than sound and is visible at a great distance. There are also disadvantages to this method of communication: you can only transmit messages that you agree on in advance. And, nevertheless, it was thanks to this device that Clytemnestra, the wife of the leader of the Greeks Agamemnon, learned about the fall of Troy. It is hard to imagine how many signal towers it took to implement this, because from Troy to Mycenae it is almost 1000 km! But the fact remains: in just a few hours, the news of the defeat of the Trojans reached the shores of Greece.
Of particular interest is the invention of the Alexandrian engineers Cleoxenes and Democletes, described by the historian and strategist Polybius, who lived in the 2nd century BC. e.
Imagine: two stations, two points - transmitting and receiving. On each of them were built two identical walls with six battlements and with five spaces between them. The 24 letters of the Greek alphabet were divided into 5 numbered groups. And only the sender and the recipient knew this numbering. On the left wall they showed the number of the group, and on the right - the number of the letter in this group. For example, if 3 torches were placed between the teeth of the left wall, it means that the required letter was in the third group. Then, if 2 torches appeared on the right wall between the teeth, then it was necessary to take the second letter in this group.
This method of transmitting information seems very complicated and cumbersome, but the ancients mastered it well. And a warning like: "The Cretans received reinforcements in 2000" - it took them only half an hour. And two hundred torches.
Another - and much more serious - disadvantage of the torch telegraph was the limited range of action: it could be used only if the stations were no more than a kilometer from each other.
HANDLING STICKS
Delivery of the secret messages was the responsibility of the messengers. But they could be captured, killed, or simply flattered by a reward. Therefore, the messages were encrypted so that only the addressee could read them.
In the 7th century in Greece, the so-called wandering was most often used. This communication device consisted of two identical sticks: the first was at the sender, and the second was at the addressee. And when it was necessary to send some secret information, the sender wound a strip of light leather obliquely around his wandering from bottom to top so that there were no gaps between its edges. Then he wrote a message on the skin along the stick and unwound the strip. And then the text disintegrated into letters and syllables. Having received the dispatch, the addressee wound it on his part of the wanderings and read the received text.
This simple but very reliable way of transmitting encrypted information once helped out the Spartan commander Lysander. He suspected his Persian allies in the war against Athens in a double game. He needed to get information about their intentions, but so that no one would know anything. A messenger who arrived from the Persian camp handed Lysander a written belt, the letters on which did not add up to any words. It was a "encryption" from the commander's agent. Lysander wound the belt around his wandering part and read the text. It turned out that the Persians were going to defeat his troops from the rear, and the supporters of Sparta had long been killed. Having received this valuable information, Lysander, quite unexpectedly for the Persians, attacked and defeated them with one blow. This is how the encryption helped change the course of the war.
CONNECTION VESSELS
In the IV century BC. e. Greek commander Aeneas the Tactician wrote a book on the art of war, in which he outlined 16 ways of transmitting classified information. Among them there is one very curious type of communication - water telegraph. This simple device consisted of two identical earthen vessels, 44 cm in diameter and 133 cm deep. Two plugs of such size were attached to them so that they could freely enter the vessels. On each of the plugs, a stand was vertically attached, divided by notches into 24 equal parts. These notches denoted a specific military event. For example, the first notch meant - the invasion of enemy cavalry, the second - heavily armed infantry, the third - the threat from the sea, the fourth - the army needs provisions, etc., etc.
Closed drain holes were located at the very bottom of the vessels. When the vessels were full of water, the plugs with fixed posts rose to the very neck, like floats. Thus, the device was ready for use.
Then they were placed, respectively, one on the signal tower at the sender of the message, the other at the recipient. When the need arose to transmit one of the "programmed" messages, the sender gave a signal to the recipient: flags - during the day, torch - at night. And, making sure that he was ready to receive the dispatch, he opened the drain hole. The recipient did the same.
Water began to flow out of both vessels simultaneously. It is clear that with a decrease in the water level, plugs with racks sank too. And when the notch with the required report was at the edge of the vessel, the sender waved a flag or a torch - and the recipient understood: it was time to plug the hole! Then he just looked at his "receiving device", noted exactly where the notch "stopped", and thus received the desired message.
Not the most convenient form of communication, frankly. He required not only utmost attention, but also certain skills. And even the coolest "pro" could only transmit a limited number of messages, and even without details, such as the number of the enemy, his weapons and the like.
Later, however, they thought of assigning a certain letter meaning to each notch. But that was not very convenient either. The letters in the words are not in alphabetical order, so we had to pour and add water to the vessels all the time. And this significantly slowed down the already slow sending of "telegrams". After all, even with cursive writing to omit certain vowels, the transmission of the message took about two hours.
Of course, the modern telegraph cannot be compared with the ancient one, but I must say that it took the principle of replacing letters with symbols and much more from its predecessor. However, it was almost supplanted by mobile communications.
Galina BELYSHEVA