Cryptography episode 2: General Substitution Cipher

🕵️‍♂️ Long before computers — and waaay before TikTok — people still had secrets to keep. One Roman general, you might’ve heard of him (hi, Julius Caesar 👋), came up with one of the earliest encryption tricks: the Caesar Cipher. Shift each letter by the same amount, and voilà — your message is hidden… kind of. But cryptographers weren’t satisfied. 💭 What if we didn’t just shift letters… but scrambled the WHOLE alphabet? Enter the General Substitution Cipher — a massive upgrade with 26! possible keys. That’s over 400 septillion combinations. Good luck cracking that with just pen and paper. Of course… even this “unbreakable” code had its weaknesses. Letter frequencies never lie — and clever codebreakers found a way in. Join us on ThinkLab as we dive into how early encryption worked, why it mattered, and how each new scheme tried (and sometimes failed) to outsmart the other side. #ThinkLab #CryptoHistory #CaesarCipher #SubstitutionCipher #FunFacts #STEM #HistoryExplained #ScienceForEveryone #Codebreaking #CiphersUncovered