{"id":129,"date":"2003-07-03T07:02:19","date_gmt":"2003-07-03T13:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/?p=129"},"modified":"2003-07-03T07:02:19","modified_gmt":"2003-07-03T13:02:19","slug":"historical-cryptography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/2003\/07\/03\/historical-cryptography\/","title":{"rendered":"Historical Cryptography"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Neal Stephenson is at it again!<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s written a new book called <i>Quicksilver<\/i>, which is part of his new <i>Baroque Cycle<\/i>.  It is, in part, about very old cryptography as described by John Wilkins in his book <A target=\"_blank\" HREF=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/9027232768\/fantasistnet\">Mercury<\/A>.  What&#8217;s interesting to me, though, is that Mr. Stephenson used this old code to run a contest.  (The details can be found <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.baroquecycle.com\/letter1.htm\">here<\/a>.)  But, it&#8217;s already been solved!  What&#8217;s more, the person who solved the mystery had never heard about Mercury, John Wilkins, or the cryptography system.  Here&#8217;s a blow-by-blow account of <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/tgarrison11.home.comcast.net\/\">how he did it<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neal Stephenson is at it again! He&#8217;s written a new book called Quicksilver, which is part of his new Baroque Cycle. It is, in part, about very old cryptography as described by John Wilkins in his book Mercury. What&#8217;s interesting to me, though, is that Mr. Stephenson used this old code to run a contest. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,28],"tags":[240,241,238,239],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun","category-science-and-technology","tag-cryptography","tag-cryptography-system","tag-john-wilkins","tag-neal-stephenson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}