27 Nov
2010
27 Nov
'10
5 a.m.
I've been reading William Blair's 1807 article on cryptography,
called "Ciper":
http://www.jdege.us/crypto/blair-cipher.pdf
Around PDF page 16, near the bottom of the first column, he proposes
a code that represents letters of the alphabet, using the symbols a
and b. What's interesting is that this is nothing more than a binary
code, with A being aaaaa, H being aabbb and so on to Z being babbb.
Is this the first mention of using a binary code to represent letters
of the (Roman) alphabet?
For the time, a remarkable document.
--Chuck