Confusion
Because both ciphers classically employed novels as part of their key material, many sources confuse the book cipher and the running key cipher. They are really only very distantly related. The running key cipher is a polyalphabetic substitution, the book cipher is a homophonic substitution. Perhaps the distinction is most clearly made by the fact that a running cipher would work best of all with a book of random numbers, whereas such a book (containing no text) would be useless for a book cipher.
Read more about this topic: Running Key Cipher
Famous quotes containing the word confusion:
“Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo problems.”
—Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970)
“My grandmother stood among her kettles and ladles.
Smiling, in faulty grammar,
She praised my fortune and urged my lofty career.
So to please her I studied—but I will remember always
How she poured confusion out, how she cooled and labeled
All the wild sauces of the brimming year.”
—Mary Oliver (b. 1935)
“When heaven and earth were in confusion hurl’d
For the debated empire of the world,
Which awed with dreadful expectation lay,
Soon to be slaves, uncertain who should sway:”
—Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus)