In the Fall of 1974 I enrolled in CS244, the Computer Security course offered at UC Berkeley and taught by Lance Hoffman. We were required to submit two project proposals, one of which we would complete for the course. I submitted a proposal for what is now known as Public Key Cryptography -- which Hoffman rejected. I dropped the course, but kept working on the idea.
Unfortunately, I lost track of the proposal and didn't find it again until September 8th, 2005, while cleaning out some boxes of old folders. There, neatly labeled "244 Project Proposal" was a folder containing the original 7 page project proposal. Here it is, found after all these years: the first unclassified document describing public key distribution and public key cryptography.
PDF of the original project proposal.
JPEG images of the individual pages:
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
After Hoffman rejected this proposal, I rewrote it to be shorter and simpler. Following is the two-page simplified version, resubmitted to Hoffman and showing his comments.
JPEG images of the individual pages:
Page 1
