How to Keep a Secret Alive

Partial key, key safeguarding, and threshold techniques appear to be another example of similar good ideas springing up in several places at nearly the same time — each with a different name and associated terminology. The use of partial key techniques actually appeared in print first in a technical report [Chaum 79] before the key safeguarding techniques were presented at a conference [Blakley 79], and before the threshold schemes were submitted for publication [Shamir 79]. (In fact the author received comments on the technical report from Shamir, along with a draft of the threshold scheme.)