Trusted timestamping

Trusted timestamping is the technique of securing the recording of a document's creation and modification timings. No one, not even the document's owner, should be able to alter the timestamp after it has been recorded, assuming the integrity of the timestamper is never compromised.

Setting up a publicly accessible, trustworthy timestamp management system to collect, process, and refresh timestamps is the administrative side.

The concept of timestamping information dates back centuries. For instance, when Robert Hooke discovered Hooke's law in 1660, he did not want to publish it immediately in order to claim primacy. Therefore, he published both the anagram ceiiinossttuv and the translation ut tensio sic vis (Latin for "as is the extension, so is the force"). Likewise, Galileo first presented his discovery of Venus' phases in anagram form.