27 Nov
2010
27 Nov
'10
5:06 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?
Ordinary search on Wikipedia says Francis Bacon did this in the early 1600s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_numeral_system#History