Re: VMs: Q. is there a to-do list?

[Brett Cotton <xzvxcvczcv@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Nick,

 

I see what you mean. I believe that there are cipher mss around and the difficulty is in locating them as many of them are off line. A couple of references that I can think of are:

 

1. I have a book called :

Secret writings

Secret Writing in the Public Records - Henry VIIIGeorge

II DA 25.F1 ? 51

Selection of 100 documents, originally written in

cipher, deciphered and transcribed. The documents

aim to be a representative sample to demonstrate the

types of document written in cipher. Several relate to

Mary Queen of Scots, and to the English Civil War.

that I picked up second hand. There are only a couple of plates of cipher text, most of the book is just the plain text.

 

2. There are references in Kahns The Codebreakers to diplomatic ciphers, especially the Spanish diplomatic ciphers that he describes the breaking of.

 

Apart from that, I am sure that they are around, and as you say the best way to find them would seem to be to co-opt the people who are their custodians. Perhaps it would be a good project for some one doing a college course in Librarianship to collate this information and get it online.

 

Brett

Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Brett,

At 10:44 20/08/2004 +0100, Brett Cotton wrote:
> > Examine "hundreds of undeciphered documents" for similarities with the VMS
> > Glen Claston/Nick Pelling
> > Find them, scan them in, and post them to the web!
>What does this refer to? I did a quick search of the email archives but
>couldn't find a reference to this one.

There is anecdotal evidence (OK, "a bloke told me in a pub" - sorry to be
unspecific, but it was a long time ago) that there are possibly thousands
of undecoded cipher letters pre-1600 languishing in archives. Archivists
are (generally) happy not knowing what they say, as long as they can find
them OK - breaking codes isn't a thing you typically learn at archivist
college. :-)

GC and I discussed this, and I suggested the idea of providing an online
cryptography for! um for archivists and manuscript librarians to scan and
upload images, to give (for example) student cryptographers and amateur
sleuths the opportunity to break unbroken codes etc, and so to add to
historical knowledge. You only have to look at the (relatively recent)
press coverage given to Professor Marcello Simonetta's cipher-breaking
exploit to know that there could be many items of great interest within
those messages - they were generally enciphered for a good reason. :-)

This is still a good idea, though I'm not sure how one would best promote
it within the manuscript community, nor how much server space would be
required for the images. Perhaps it's an "if you build it they will come"
kind of idea? :-o

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....


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