The Playfair system is named not for its creator, but for its greatest supporter. Lyon Playfair was good friends with Charles Wheatstone, who is the actual creator of the misnamed Playfair cipher. Wheatstone and Playfair were good friends in Victorian England. They were both short and had such similar appearance that even Lady Wheatstone once mistook one for the other. Playfair was a public figure: a speaker in the House of Commons, postmaster general, and the head of Englands committee for Advancement of Sciences. It was in one of these public positions that Playfair demonstrated Wheatstone's remarkable system.

Playfair presented his friend's system to several important figures, including Prince Albert (Queen Victoria's husband), future prime minister Lord Palmerston, and the president of the governing council, Lord Granville. The system drew enthusiast reviews from all, except from the Under Secretary of the Foreign Office when it was presented for governmental use. The Under Secretary disregarded the cipher as too complicated. In response, Playfair claimed that he could teach 'three out of four schoolboys from the nearest elementary school' the system in only '15 minutes'. The secretary replied 'That is very possible, but you could never teach it to attaches.'

Eventually, the cipher was adopted by Britain and used for military purposes during the Boar War. The military office, because of Playfair's intense enthusiasm for the system called it 'Playfair's cipher,' and the name has been used ever since.

So, what was this great system and why? Since it is more complicated than most, we'll begin with an example of the playfair in action to get you aquanted with it.