 The name was based upon Jules Verne's Nautilus and its ability to overcome a Clipper ship as a play on Clipper chip.Nautilus is historically significant in the realm of secure communications because it was one of the first programs which were released as open source to the general public which used strong encryption.It was created as a response to the Clipper chip in which the US government planned to use a key escrow scheme on all products which used the chip.