From: Sean Roach <roach_s@alph.swosu.edu>
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 15:58:36 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: concerning Ben Franklin
Message-ID: <199702032358.PAA06548@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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I was reading one of the posts in the thread reguarding sone stolen object
in Miami, the one reffering to the locks of the boxes, and it got me thinking.
Ben Franklin was a revolutionary, scientist, inventor, publisher, statesman,
and bookburner (according to F451).  Perhaps he should be considered to be a
cypherpunk, not that he necessarily knew anything about crypto, but because
he was interested in many of the same ideals.  It is my belief that were he
alive today, he would be on this list.  If the work of fiction referred to
above, and in another recent post, is accurate in its reference to Franklin,
then he would seem to have had the same solution to net pollution, burn it.
Rather than considering Ben Franklin the first fireman, I would like to
think of him as an early breed of cypherpunk.  By this I consider cypherpunk
to be interested in the subject, and its outcome, and a cryptographer to be
just one faction of cypherpunk.  Merely my opinion.
Does anyone know whether or not Mr. Franklin may have played with code as
well?  All of my sources were assimilated into my understanding of the man
several years ago, and at the time crypto was less in the public eye than it
is now.