Final answer:
"The Gold Bug" by Edgar Allan Poe was published in 1843, featuring a treasure hunt and cryptography that contributed to Poe's fame and the story's popularity.
Step-by-step explanation:
The short story "The Gold Bug" by Edgar Allan Poe was first published in 1843. It is a tale of adventure and cryptanalysis, centering on a treasure hunt on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, and it includes elements of Poe's signature dark romanticism and intricate plotting. The publication of "The Gold Bug" helped to popularize cryptography as it features a detailed description of how a secret message is encoded and decoded.
A couple of the themes within The Gold Bug are wealth and code, specifically cryptography. The story starts with the narrator telling the audience that his friend, William Legrand, used to be rich but lost all his money and moved to South Carolina to avoid further shame.
The concept, in the second sense, was popularized in the 1896 U.S. presidential election, when William McKinley supporters took to wearing gold lapel pins, gold neckties, and gold headbands in a demonstration of support for gold against the "silver menace".