Code Desk
Where this idea comes from
The pigpen cipher
Freemasons used the pigpen cipher from the early 1700s. The letters sit in the cells of two grids and two crosses, and each letter is written as the shape of its cell.
One thing to hold: A gravestone: one in Trinity Churchyard, New York, from 1794, carries a message in pigpen.
Why it matters: It is easy to learn and looks like nothing at all — but anyone who knows the grid can read it.
What we don’t know: Where the cipher first came from is not known; versions of it are older than the Freemasons.
Morse code
Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail built a telegraph code of short and long signals in the late 1830s. The international code used today, which changes many of the American letters, was agreed at a telegraph conference in Paris in 1865.
One thing to hold: A brass telegraph key: press briefly for a dot, hold for a dash.
Why it matters: The same pattern can travel as clicks, tones, flashes of light or taps on a pipe. The message is the pattern, not the sound — so it can be seen as well as heard.
What we don’t know: People still argue over how much of the code was Vail’s work rather than Morse’s.
Dates:
- 1844 Morse sends “What hath God wrought” from Washington to Baltimore.
- 1865 A conference in Paris agrees an international version of the code.