The Florida agriculturist., 1889-04-24
CABLING IN CIPHER.
OutwitLing the Companies by Cheap
enimD DeviC.S

codes to see if he could throw any light
on the meaning
Have you made no personal arrange
ment with any correspondent by which
those names of cities are to stand for GER
tain phrases?" asked the expert
Il have not. answered the man. 81
came to you because thought you might
have some code containing the ciphers. "
There is no printed code that contains
proper names as ciphers, said the ex
pert. THE reason is this: The cable
companies accepted all kinds of business
at first. even combinations of letters
which spelled nothing. But they soon
found that the ingenuity of their mer-
chant patrons enabled them to send al
most any message at the cost of but
few words, by devising codes wherein.
each letter stood for a 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
it's of the cable companies, so they began
to make rules. They refused to trans
nit any combination of letters unless it
spelled an actual word. Then they linn
tied the number of languages they would
transmit Then they refused to take
proper names, unless the context showed
they were proper part.
'All 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 the difficulties
increased men began to make specialties
Of devising ingenious codes, and finally
the companies had to come out fiat footed
and refuse to transmit messages in xipher.
Of course this was a severe blow to trade,
as vast quantity of small business could
not then be done, because the cost of
cabling about it cut off most of the even
tual profit.
CARRIE WAS VERY ILL
+'Rut even then codes were used but
of a curious sort In one that know of,
for instance it was arranged that GER
tain large catalogue of common verbs,
nouns, adjectives and propositions should
be understood to have no meaning what
ever The cipher words were made up
outside of this catalogue, and the ex-
empted words were used to fill in, giving
the semblance of an actual. straight out
sentence. Here was sentence, for in
stance, that | cabled while clerk in
shipping house
Carrie very ill Tell Thomas prepare nitrate;
Ananias going; telegraph Josephine
That looks innocent; yet this is what
it meant.
Garry Market on eve of sharp rise
Very Buy for speculation
''In No meaning
''Tel No meaning
Thomas Ship at earliest dispatch.
"Prepare-One hundred tons
Nitrate Nitrate of soda (Saltpeter)
"Ananias- We can sell at
''Going-N No meaning
Josephine cents
80 you see really sent this message:
Market on eve of sharp rise Buy for specu
ation Ship 100 tons nitrate of soda at earliest
dispatch We can sell at cents Telegraph
THAT is to say, sent twenty six
words at a cost of eleven words, while
appeared to the cable company to be mere
ly transmitting a communication that
poor Carrie was sick. and that Ananias
was going to telegraph Josephine about
it, 1t must have seemed strange to the
operators that we 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 word. 1t
must also have seemed strange that Car
rie got very i'll every time there was a