Some Quotes

A review of Diffie and Hellman's groundbreaking article is amusing, because the reviewer, J.S. Joel, says ``They propose a couple of techniques for implementing the system, but the reviewer was unconvinced.''

Diffie, Whitfield; Hellman, Martin E. 
 New directions in cryptography. 
 IEEE Trans. Information Theory IT-22 (1976), no. 6, 644--654.

The authors discuss some of the recent results in communications theory that have arisen out of the need for security in the key distribution channels. They concentrate on the use of ciphers to restrict the extraction of information from a communication over an insecure [channel]. As is well known, the transmission and distribution is then likely to become a problem, in efficiency if not in security. The authors suggest various possible approaches to avoid these further problems that arise. The first they call a ``public key distribution system'', which has the feature that an unauthorized ``eavesdropper'' will find it computationally infeasible to decipher the message since the enciphering and deciphering are governed by distinct keys. They propose a couple of techniques for implementing the system, but the reviewer was unconvinced.

Somebody named Alan Westrope wrote in 1998 about political implications:

The 1976 publication of ``New Directions in Cryptography'', by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, was epochal in cryptographic history. Many regard it as the beginning of public-key cryptography, analogous to a first shot in what has become an ongoing battle over privacy, civil liberties, and the meaning of sovereignty in cyberspace.

Here is what Diffie and Hellman look like, respectively:

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