History and definition of the term 'principal'?

dan at geer.org dan at geer.org
Thu Apr 27 07:23:05 EDT 2006



I was manager of development for Project Athena beginning
in 1985.  Amongst our projects was Kerberos, and, as you
know, it was a direct implementation of Needham-Schroeder.
Schroeder had been Jerome Saltzer's Ph.D. student and 
Saltzer was the MIT faculty member in charge of the
technical side of Athena, and to whom I reported.  The
word "principal" was solidly in place from the moment
the Kerberos work began, and comes directly from the
work of Saltzer and Schroeder.  At least as early as
1975 the term "principal" was in use in their work;
see [1] for my own earliest reference.  I suspect it
was in place at Project MAC and might thus have some
lineage with Multics, but now I am speculating.

Needham is sadly gone, but Schroeder and Saltzer are
still with us.  If it is worth my pursuit of the matter
I'll make the time for it, but I now forget why this
was asked.  If it is curiousity, perhaps the canoe is
now far enough upriver.  If it is a patent claim or the
like and one needs to find the exact wet spot in the
ground that the river starts, well, let me know.

--dan


[1] Proceedings of the IEEE. Vol. 63, No. 9 (September 1975), pp.
1278-1308; Manuscript received October 11, 1974; revised April 17,
1975. Copyright 1975 by J. H. Saltzer.  The authors are with Project
MAC and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Mass. 02139.


---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com



More information about the cryptography mailing list