Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1898-06-25
REPORTS IN CIPHER.
An interesting Study That is Being
Given Much Attention


From the Philadelphia In1uirer
All important dispatches which nass no.
tween our government and its diplomatic
agents and its military and naval officers.
when IN service, are written in cipher
since the dispatches are usually trans
mltted by telegraph, the characters used
IN them are restricted necessarily to the
letters of the alphabet or numerals CT A
combination of both, the point about the
CIPHER being that to one not in possession
OF the key" it is pure glbberish If II
consists of words, the words convey no
meaning; or it may not consist even of
words, but may be a confused and confus-
Ing tumble of letters
NIpher messages. or cryptograms, as they
are sometimes called, are constructed m
on an almost infinite variety of plans a
vast deal of ingenuity has been expended
IN deVlslng methods of secret writing
MHlcn, "hlie being of sufficiently great
simplicity to be practically seryicea bile
10 permit message TO be written easily
ard to be easily read by one in possession
Oh the key-Shall still be of such comDlex-
NY as 10 baf1e the uninitiated. The plans
upon which are constructed the ciphers
used by our own government are of
course, well-guarded secret; but that the
ciphers are OF great complexity may be
Jpugeu IRON the time required recently to
reao a snort dispa tch received from Com
ncaGre Dewey, announcing his victory at
Manila The message was received et
ashlnSton at a. m, Saturday, May !,
YET II was not until nearly noon, as We
all remember we'll, that its meaning had
been found and its plain English was i'm
parted 10 the waiting newspaper CORE
Spondents.
Inc idea of writing a message in such a
way that no one can read it except the re-
c'plent for whom it is intended is one
so likely to suggest itself on occasion and
so easy to be carried out in a variety of
ways that we are not surprised to find
ciphers employed at a very early reriod
The methods first adopted however
though they probably subserved their end
well enough. were SO exceedingly crude as
really TO afford little protection against
the prying eye of any one possessed of
the average amount of ingenuity. Polynius
describes method adopted by the Lace
oemonlans. When the Spartan state Off
cldls wished TO communicate with d gem
eral In the field they wound slant-Wise
narrow strip of parchment upon a wand.
50 that the edges met closely, and the mes
sage was then added in such a way that
the center of the line of writing was on
the edges of the parchment When IN
wound the message consisted of broken
letters and in that condition it was dis
patched to its destination. The general
TO whose hands it came deciphered it by
means of a wand corresponding in size to
that used in writing it.
one OF the simplest and most common of
cfpherS is that in which the writer selects
In place Of the proper letters other charac-
tiers, the use of which has previously been
agreed upon with his correspondent, who
thus holds the key" He may either use
for this purpose letters of the alphabet.
arranged out of their usual order, or ar
bitrary symbols-numerals, crosses. dashes.
etc.-each character always standing in
this scheme for the same letter. This
method Is said to have been employed by
julius Caesar, his practice being to use
instead Of the proper letter that which
stood in the fourth place from it in the
alphabet. Thus. instead of writing "a"
he wrote d. instead of "b'' he wrote
"e. and SO on through the alphabet
A message thus written has at first sight
certainly a puzzling look particularly If
the words are not spaced. But its de-
c:pherment Is really the simplest thing in
the world, that is, when the language in
which 1t is written is known.
Probably the most difficult of the cI-
piers in ordinary use is that based upon
some book. the words or letters which II
is desired to being indicated in some
way agreed upon by their places in the
book used as key. The famous Oregon ci-
pher dispatches of some years ago, which
were deciphered and published by the New
York Tribune, were of this character the
key being found in a rare edition of a
small dictionary.
The assertion has often been made that
human ingenuity cannot invent a cipher
which human ingenuity cannot unrayel
This is stating the case pretty strongly;
| ment have certainly been performed No
ordinary ingenuity, working without a full
knowledge of the requisites Of a perfect ci-
pher, has ever devised one which would
give much trouble to an expert at worm
Ing the secret out of a writing of this sort