The Vigenère cipher is a method of encrypting alphabetic text by using series of different Caesar ciphers based on the letters of a keyword. The method was originally described by Giovan Battista Bellaso in 16th century, while Blaise de Vigenère created autokey cipher. The invention was later missattributed to Blaise de Vigenère in the 19th century and is now widely known as the "Vigenère cipher". Though the cipher is easy for understanding and implementation, for three centuries it resisted all attempts to break it; this is why it earned the description "le chire indechirable", french for the indecipherable cipher. However, it appeared that the cipher can be broken by using methods for determining length of a keyword and determining a keyword. The Playfair cipher is a simple but eective cipher in which pairs of letters are encryp- ted using the 5×5 matrix. The cipher was actually invented not by Baron Playfair, but by the physicist and inventor Sir Charles Wheatstone in 19th century. Playfair's main role was to popularize it. Initially, the cipher was turned down because it was thought to be too complicated. But, it turned out to be easier to use than almost all the ciphers that were then in use. This cipher can be broken by using the analysis of bigrams frequencies. The Vigenère and the Playfair cipher are dened in this work. Also, methods of encryption and decryption in each of this cryptosystems are shown on examples.