📜 **The GCHQ Precedent**
In 1969 — seven years before Diffie and Hellman — James Ellis of the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) conceived the idea of “non-secret encryption.” In 1973, Clifford Cocks, a young Cambridge mathematician at GCHQ, devised a practical implementation equivalent to what would later be called RSA. Malcolm Williamson independently discovered a key exchange protocol equivalent to Diffie–Hellman. All of this was classified until 1997. The mathematicians received no public credit for over two decades. Ellis died in 1997, the year the work was declassified, never having received the recognition he deserved.
— From: Diffie, Hellman, and the Key Exchange Revolution
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