cccalco
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- Jul 16, 2009
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From the book "Lincoln in the telegraph office: recollections of the United States Military Telegraph Corps during the civil war"
By David Homer Bates (1907) found at
Lincoln in the telegraph office: recollections of the United States Military ... - David Homer Bates - Google Books
The excerpt reads "In the waistcoat pocket of John Wilkes Booth, when his body was searched after he was shot, was found a copy of an alphabet square exactly like the one used by Johnston and other Southern generals, and another copy was found in his trunk at the National Hotel, Washington, where he last roomed before the tragedy. In my war diary is this entry: "
A copy of the cipher codex found both on Booth and in his trunk can be seen at:
http://htmlimg3.scribdassets.com/8s2ifd04n423661f/images/88-17db3653ba.jpg
The fonts are shown in the "Friedman Legacy" found at Friedman Legacy
The following exerpt describes their manufacter.
"Sooner or later a Confederate signal officer was bound to come up with a device to simplify enciphering operations, and a gadget devised by a Captain William N. Barker seemed to meet the need. In Myer’s Manual there is a picture of one form of the device, shown here in figure 65. I don’t think it was necessary to explain how it worked, for it is almost self-evident. Several of these devices were captured during the war, one of them being among the items in the NSA museum (fig. 66). This device was captured at Mobile in 1865. All it did was to mechanize, in a rather inefficient manner, the use of the Vigenère Cipher"
Fig. 65 is drawn at the top, fig. 66 is shown in the photo at the bottom.
http://htmlimg4.scribdassets.com/8s2ifd04n423661f/images/87-29a9197de9.jpg
"So very fragmentary was the amount of crypto-logic information known to the general public in these days that when there was found on John Wilkes Booth’s body a cipher square that was almost identical with the cipher square that had been mounted on the cipher reel found in Confederate secretary of state Judah P. Benjamin’s office in Richmond, the federal authorities in Washington attempted to prove that this necessarily meant the Confederate leaders were implicated in the plot to assassinate Lincoln and had been giving Booth instructions in cipher. Figure 67 is a picture of the cipher square found on Booth, and alsoin a trunk in his hotel room in Washington."
By David Homer Bates (1907) found at
Lincoln in the telegraph office: recollections of the United States Military ... - David Homer Bates - Google Books
The excerpt reads "In the waistcoat pocket of John Wilkes Booth, when his body was searched after he was shot, was found a copy of an alphabet square exactly like the one used by Johnston and other Southern generals, and another copy was found in his trunk at the National Hotel, Washington, where he last roomed before the tragedy. In my war diary is this entry: "
A copy of the cipher codex found both on Booth and in his trunk can be seen at:
http://htmlimg3.scribdassets.com/8s2ifd04n423661f/images/88-17db3653ba.jpg
The fonts are shown in the "Friedman Legacy" found at Friedman Legacy
The following exerpt describes their manufacter.
"Sooner or later a Confederate signal officer was bound to come up with a device to simplify enciphering operations, and a gadget devised by a Captain William N. Barker seemed to meet the need. In Myer’s Manual there is a picture of one form of the device, shown here in figure 65. I don’t think it was necessary to explain how it worked, for it is almost self-evident. Several of these devices were captured during the war, one of them being among the items in the NSA museum (fig. 66). This device was captured at Mobile in 1865. All it did was to mechanize, in a rather inefficient manner, the use of the Vigenère Cipher"
Fig. 65 is drawn at the top, fig. 66 is shown in the photo at the bottom.
http://htmlimg4.scribdassets.com/8s2ifd04n423661f/images/87-29a9197de9.jpg
"So very fragmentary was the amount of crypto-logic information known to the general public in these days that when there was found on John Wilkes Booth’s body a cipher square that was almost identical with the cipher square that had been mounted on the cipher reel found in Confederate secretary of state Judah P. Benjamin’s office in Richmond, the federal authorities in Washington attempted to prove that this necessarily meant the Confederate leaders were implicated in the plot to assassinate Lincoln and had been giving Booth instructions in cipher. Figure 67 is a picture of the cipher square found on Booth, and alsoin a trunk in his hotel room in Washington."