Re: So Who is Credited with Inventing “Count Sort” as we know it Today - Anybody?

[Austin Obyrne <austin.obyrne@hotmail.com>]

On Sunday, June 24, 2012 2:26:27 PM UTC+1, Austin Obyrne wrote:
> I volunteered to draw a line under this topic last evening but on refection I don’t think I should roll over that easily without making a claim to at least re-inventing a close resemblance and perhaps an improved version of that same sort program. 
> 
> I am continuing my claim to have invented a sort program that I am calling “Parallel Sort”.
> 
> Digressing for a while, Charles Babbage (born 1791) is famously credited with breaking the equally famous “Vigenere Cipher” that had lain unbroken for two centuries prior to that.  His modus operandi was based on his noticing that languages have a frequency pattern. 
> 
> In cryptography, if the ciphertext is the same data type as the plaintext it is obfuscating, the illegal cryptanalyst can establish the frequency of the ciphertext and then use this to statistical map the ciphertext in an exploratory way to the plaintext that it originated from. (This statement is hugely over simplistic here) 
> 
> That was the ploy that Babbage invented.
> 
> The Brits are usually fairly honest people about such matters and give credit where credit is due.  The Russian, Friedrich Wilhelm Kasiski  had beaten Charles Babbage to this invention however  by ten years and it is conceded therefore today that it is a joint invention by both Kasiski and Babbage at different times.
> 
> Sorting and checking for repeats is an important process in cryptography to day and a sort program such as I am using is deserving of its place in the history of crypto technology in my view.
> 
> I shall continue therefore to claim my invention of Parallel Sort (Like Babbage) is an independent piece of intellectual property.
> 
> But who did invent “Count Sort” on the other hand is something I would like to know – an individual ?.
> 
> Thanks again for all your helpful comments.
> 
> Austin O’Byrne.

Harold H. Seward was a computer scientist and the developer of the radix sort algorithm in 1954 at MIT.[1] He also developed the counting sort.

I have just noticed this in Wikipedia.

Clearly, since computer science din't come into vogue until the seventies his invention must have been desk top only in 1954 - my invention emanates from  a working program in 2012 that is computer intensive - my claim that I have invented a similar algorithm but a different implementation is perfectly valid.

- adacrypt