Warehouse 13 Artifact Database Wiki
Warehouse 13 Artifact Database Wiki
Gilbert Vernam's Paper Tape

Origin

Gilbert Vernam

Type

Paper Tape

Effects

Converts text into a poly-alphabetic cipher

Downsides

Illegible text

Activation

Contact with documents

Collected by

Warehouse 13

Section

Pinkerton-435K

Aisle

696468-4553

Shelf

849988-1454-395

Date of Collection

1970

[Source]


Origin[]

Gilbert Sandford Vernam (1890 - 1960) was an engineer who invented an additive poly-alphabetic stream cipher. Vernam propose that a teleprinter cipher kept on paper tape be combined character by character with a plaintext message to produce a cipertext. To decipher the ciphertext, the same key would be once again used to create the plaintext. This system helped forge the way for telegraph networks and automatic switching systems.

Effects[]

When placed on top of any document it converts all text into a poly-alphabetic stream cipher, document becomes unreadable