steganos = étanche; cryptos = caché; graphos = écrit
Thus the
revelations of a young woman on her way to communicate " secretly " with her fiancé
would have given the idea of the first stamp to Sir Rowland Hill.
If
there is an agreement on the date of 1 May 1840 as the date of issuance of the
first stamp in order to fight against steganographic fraud , we must admit that, steganography
and cryptography are certainly as old as the need to transmit a message.
For instance, the Greek historian Herodotus that Cicero designated as "The Father of
History", already tells amazing stories in his "Histories" (also called The
Investigations).
A first anecdote. The invasion of Greece by Xerxes I projects were revealed to
the Greeks by a secret message from Demaratus. Demaratus (former Spartan king
refuged to Xerxes I) used a writing tablet, he scratched in the wax and wrote
his information message directly on the wood. He covered again the tablet with a
layer of wax and the secret message could travel incognito.
Was this
secret message decisive for the Greek victory ? Hard to rewrite history with
ifs. The fact is that Leonidas the Spartan inflicted on the Persians lost 20,000
men at the Battle of Thermopylae and the army of Xerxes I was then defeated by
Themistocles at Salamis in 480 BC. AD .
However, Xerxes I had raised an
army of 5,283,220 men to carry out his project. Herodotus gives details in his
Histories (Book VII, Polyhymnia).