, 1889-04-12
CABLING IN CIPHER.
OUTWlTTlNG THE COMPANIES BY
cHEAPENlNG DEVICES.

Important Part Played by Competition.
A man who had received a cable mes
sag composed of nothing but names of
cities went to an expert maker of cipher
codes to sec II no could throw any Light
on the meaning.
"Have you made no personal arrange
ment with any correspondent by which
those anne of cities are to stand for GER
tain phrases asked the expert
81 have not, answered the man. II
came to you because 1 thought you might
have some code containing the ciphers."
"There is no printed code that contains
proper names as ciphers," said h ex-
pert 1.-THE reason is this: The cable
companies accepted all kinds of business
Mt first, even combinations of letters
which spelled nothing. But they soon
found that the ingenuity of their met-
chant patrons enabled them to send al
most any message at the cost of but O
few words, by devising codes wherein
each letter stood for n phrase, and
wherein even the juxtaposition of letters
and numerals, which in themselves had
meanings, indicated still other mean
ings. OF course this reduced the prof
its of the cable companies, SO they began
to make rules. They refused to rams
init any combination of letters unless it
spelled an actual word. Then they lin
tied the number of languages they would
transmit Then they refused to take
proper names, unless the context showed
they were n proper part.
"An this, Of course, was to make it SO
hard to get up satisfactory and perma-
nent cable codes that the merchant would
be compelled for safety's sake to resort
to straight out and out discourse In franz
ing his messages. But as tho difficulties
increased men began to mako specialties
OF devising ingenious codes, and finally
the companies had to come out flat footed
and refuse to transmit messages in cipher.
OF course this was n severe blow to trade,
as a vast quantity of small business could
not then DO done, because tho cost Of
cabling about 1t cut OF most of tho even
tual profit.
CARRIE WAS E ILL.
"But even then codes were used, but
of a curious sort. In one hat 1 know of,
for instance, 1t was arranged that a GER
tain large catalogue of common verbs,
nouns, adjectives and propositions should
be understood to hav no meaning what
aver. The cipher words were made up
outside of this catalogue, and the ex-
empted words were used to fill in, giving
the semblanco of an actual, straight out
sentence. Here was a sentence, for in
stance, that l cabled while n clerk in q
shipping house:
Carrie very Ill. Tell Thomas prepare nitrate;
Ananlas going; telegraph Josephine.
"That looks innocent; yet this is what
it meant:
"~Carry-Market on eve of q sharp rise.
"very-Buy for speculation
'm-No meaning.
"Ten-No meaning. i
"Thomas-Ship at earliest dispatch.
"Preparo-one hundred tons.
"Nltrate-Nitrate of soda Csaltpeter).
"Ananias-Wo can sell at
'Going-No meaning.
"Josephine-Nine cents.
$50 you see 1 really sent this MESSAGE:
Market on eve of q sharp rise. Buy for specu-
lation- Ship 100 tons nitrate of soda at earliest
dispatch. We can sell at 0 cents. Telegraph.
THAT is to say, l sent twenty-six
words at q cost of eleven words, while I
appeared to the cable company to be mere
ly transmitting a communication that
poor Carrie was sick, and hat Ananias
"so bOLiS W q ialh OOoSlIIlIIO ubOb
it. 1t must have seemed strange to the
operators that VIC should telegraph
Thomas, who was 5000 miles away, to
prepare medicine for Carrie, who was
presumably in New York, especially as
the rate then was about Sc q word. 1t
must also have seemed strange that Car
RE got very ill every time there was u
rise in the nitrate market. But the mes
sage was straight discourse, and of
course the companies had nothing to do
but accept the message.
mo CIPHERs PERMITTED"
Competition finally came to the mer-
chants aid. New cable lines, seeking
business, offered more liberal conditions,
and gradually the merchant acquired, as
his recognized right, the power of using
a cipher code. Still, most of the original
petty retrictions were adopted by all
competitors. Among these were the reg
ulations against proper anne AS n
matter of fact, in the present state of
competition, one is toierabiy safe In using
proper names and ciphers, for each COM
pany is afraid of driving custom to n
rival by applying the rule. Consequently
there are any number of small personal
or temporary codes agreed upon between
man INT man to serve q certain imme-
diate purpose, in which names Of towns
or persons figure as ciphers. But we
professional code makers, who compile
and print expensive codes for sale to the
public, carefully avoid infringing even
dead letter rules, because we do not
know when some big cable company
may swallow up q smaller competitor