Concerning the bi-literal cypher of Francis Bacon discovered in his works

by Elizabeth Wells Gallup

The answers already given meet the summarised objection of the correspondent’s eighth and ninth paragraphs.

The Deciphering Workroom.

10. “The nature of the Cipher is such, being in fact entirely dependent upon the presence and position of a certain number of b's, that, given a framework of such determining, factors (which might easily be supplied by the acknowledged differences in a few letters), a misdirected ingenuity could with patience supply all that a preconceived notion could possibly demand.”

The cipher alphabet Bacon illustrates in De Augmentis Scientiarum contains 68 a's and 52 b's. The proportion in general use was found to be about 5 to 3. Perhaps I cannot do better to clear myself from the aspersions here intimated than to explain the methods of the workroom by which the larger part of the deciphering was actually done. A type-writing machine was changed in its mechanism to space automatically after each group of five letters. The operator alone copied every Italic letter, and the sheets came to me with the letters already grouped. The different forms of letters in the book to be deciphered were then made a study, the peculiarities of each fount classified and sketched in an enlarged and accentuated form upon a small chart, and the 'b fount’ (being the fewer) was thoroughly learned. The chart was always before me for use upon doubtful letters. I marked upon the sheet on which the letters had been grouped only those that I found to be of the 'b fount.’ An assistant marked the a's and transcribed the result, when I knew for the first time the reading of the deciphered product. It was thus impossible for me to “preconceive” it, and no amount of “ingenuity, misdirected” or otherwise, could have developed the hundreds of pages of MS. of these consecutive letters into anything except what the cipher letters would spell out.

The Operator and the Errors.

Excepting, of course, occasional corrections of the errors of the operator in copying, or myself in determining the proper fount, the work stands exactly as it left the assistant’s hands. The original sheets are unchanged and in my possession. Errors occurred in the work as it progressed, but they were so guarded against by the system itself that the deciphering was quickly brought to a stop until they were corrected. Coming from the assistant, the words were without capitals, or punctuation, as would be the case by any method of deciphering a cipher. The work of capitalization and punctuation, in the book, is my own, and in this alone was choice permitted me.

The difficulty with “A Correspondent,” as with many observers, is that he jumps at once to conclusions from very superficial and limited examination, as well as unfamiliarity with the principles which underlie the work; and while his keenness of observation is greater than some evince, he has not, by any means, given the matter sufficient study to become an expert, or to warrant him in expressing a critical judgment. He would not expect to learn Greek in a day, nor to decipher hieroglyphics on an obelisk upon a first attempt. There are in the Plays five pairs of alphabets of twenty-four letters each (capital and small) in the different styles and sizes of Italic type. In other words, four hundred and eighty different letters have to be compared with their fellows to determine the classification. It is not, then, the work of a day or a week to enable one to pass an opinion upon the Folio as a whole, and yet that is what he attempts to do.

The “Times” Facsimiles.

The Times reproduces a page of facsimiles and an illustration taken from Spenser’s Complaints, and has also arranged in enlarged form some small letters. In fairness the captials should have appeared as well. In the processes necessary for reproduction, upon newspaper of coarse fibre and uneven surface with the speed of a modern press, many distinctive features of the letters have been lost or distorted to the skilled eye, and the unskilled should not be asked to form a judgment of the integrity of a difficult cipher from such utterly untrustworthy reproductions.

As explained in the Introduction to the second edition of my book, the facsimiles were not satisfactory. The difficulties arising from age, unequal absorption of ink, poor paper, and poor printing in the old books, cause some features to be exaggerated, while others disappear; and on account of unavoidable inaccuracies, they were omitted from the third edition.