John Markoff, NY Times, 25 July 2011 ¶ Steven M Bellovin encounters Frank Miller's Telegraphic Code to Insure Privacy and Secrecy in the Transmission of Telegrams (1882) — http://bit.ly/q5lZke — and argues this is early one-time pad; wonder what relationship might be with so-called telegraphic "test keys" or "keys" used by banking houses, e.g., those of Kleinwort, Sons and Co. at Guildhall (Ms22142) ¶ my recollection, anyway, is that each day, a different key was used (having no relation to previous day's or days') — these would, of course, not have been "published"

discussion at http://bit.ly/q4WVNS

session 12 (Saturday) : Technical Vocabulary in Dictionaries
4:30 The place and role of terms in general bilingual dictionaries from the Middle Ages to the present – Amélie Josselin-Leray & Roda P. Roberts
5:00 Comparative inclusion and treatment of scientific and technical vocabulary in OALD3, OALD4, and OALD8 – Marjeta Vrbinc
5:30 Language engineering and lexicography, 1870-1930: A case for telegraphic codes – John McVey

yep. spells S-H-I-R-A-Z ¶ courtesy bachrach44

though at 14.7 percent, a bit strong for me. ¶"In this digital world, we remember the craft of the postal telegraphists. For decades their Morse signals, dexterously delivered across Australia's great telegraph line, connected us with the world and helped to save countless lives. We honour the Morse Codian Fraternity with this collection of fine wines." ¶ Morse for chardonnay too.

headed the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, and one day graciously walked me through the literature on the codes used.

"Like other dictionaries, they are rather disconnected but not uninteresting or uninstructive reading. As a list of the "codewords" in use by the merchants of our modern Babyon tells us what messages the latter sends most frequently…", footnoted by a couple of (edited) extracts from Unicode: The Telegraphic Phrase-book. ¶ Edith Jemima Simcox, Primitive Civilizations: or, Outlines of the history of ownership (London 1893) vol 1, p 339

in "Notices of Recent Publications," The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal 5:1 (Jan-Feb 1874) ¶ dismissive of Escayrac's idea, which is likened (correctly) to "the Universal Language invented by Bishop Wilkins, a learned man, who among other improvements invented an apparatus to enable people to fly."

Boutiques de musées - Catalogue d'exposition

which locutions contain several words, which can be conveyed by a single sign of the telegraph…" ex a report by Mr. Mouton "to accompany his bill S. No. 261," Congressional Serial Set, Volume 378 (26th Congress, 2d Session, February 18, 1841)

"…"The Executive Committee of the Colored Convention." All the colored people throughout the State were members of this organization and contributed of their funds to aid in covering the cost of different court trials. The duty of this committee was to be on the constant watch to defend the interest of the race in every part of the State. They had what corresponded to a secret service or code of transmitting news to one another, since there was neither a rapid mail service nor telegraphic communication. They transmitted the news by the way of the barber's chair. The barbers at the time throughout the State were colored. It was through this channel they learned of any move for or against the Negro made in the legislative halls or elsewhere…" ¶ great story, here!

or Instantaneous Letter Writer, by mail or telegraph, for the convenience of persons traveling on business or for pleasure, and for others, whereby a vast amount of time, labor, and trouble is saved. By A(braham).C(hittenden). Baldwin. New York, 1853 ¶ dedicated to SFB Morse and to Henry J Rogers, esq., "whose 'Telegraphic Dictionary' is daily causing the sailor's heart to rejoice amid the perils of the ocean." ¶ divided into "departments: for Traveling, Home, Clergymen, Commercial, and Miscellaneous. ¶ 8466 numbered phrases, no codewords. originally conceived for magnetic telegraph, now modified to suit postcard communication, involving numbers and qualifying text, e.g., names, where needed. example of same at p viii. "Persons unaccustomed to writing, and to whom the penning of a few lines is a great burden, will find this book an efficient aid and relief…" also suited to amusement, as a substitute for "conversation-cards…" ¶ NYPL copy.

listed under categories : hands; abstract codes; picture codes; notation; diagrammatic; insignia; maps and location; tabled information; language ¶ all from Dr Chris Mullen, The Visual Telling of Stories : A lyrical encyclopedia of visual propositions; rugged design in opposition to elegance ¶ bookmarked long ago, reminded by things magazine, http://thingsmag.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/visual-platter/

The Letters of Oscar Wilde, Rupert Hart-Davis, 2nd edn, 1962 (p666) ¶ this snippet gets it all.

not on phrases, but on the codewords themselves, too many of which are selected with no attention to signal spacing in the underlying telegraphic alphabet, thus rendering them susceptible to error. no discussion of charge imbalance, that Donard deCogan wrote so well about, however. ¶ The Electrical Review (February 1, 1880)

from Hamilton Wood Type Catalogue No. 17 (1901) ¶ nice images of manicules, too!

The Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 47 (1911) : 450-529
Builds on his “Setting Type by Telegraph” (1905); analytical and practical. good account of press messages (463-466), newspaper private wires (466-467), even “counting words in telegrams (473-477)

The Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 34 (1905): 555-608 ¶ beautiful presentation.
“The simplicity of these machines and the saving of wire cost depend on the fewness and simplicity of these signals. It is in this reduction in the number and the simplification of signals that there will be found to lie not only the fundamental distinction between the telegraph and the telephone, but also the fundamental criterion of all telegraph systems...” (557); Mr Judd in discussion, “but when the hideous code words...”; automatic typesetting by telegraph is discussed at 593, including obstacles; the President (at 607-08) remarks, “I have never seen before that the demonstrator absolutely took the instrument to pieces before the audience and put it together again — and then worked...” ¶ numerous images of "code"

including a copious list of the names of places, persons, ships, articles in London price current, medicines, ship's indent book, and an easy means of reference to "Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary," whereby

ex Peter Bernard Kyne, Cappy Ricks Retires (1922) ¶ discussion of cables and use of the Blue Star Fleet's private cable code starts at p51

"…and half a dozen of those words sent to India will blossom out into a letter several pages in length under the manipulation of the cable-code clerk… there are experts who overhaul code books every three months or so…" ex Robert Barr, "Wonders of the Code" in The Idlers Club, in The Idler 22 (October 1902 – March 1903) :p753

Frank Everson Vandiver, Black Jack: the life and times of John J. Pershing (vol 2, 1977): 440

involves decimalization of Bertillon's signaletic system

scroll down to Book of Secrets — Anonymous scribe and illustrator, Spain, ca. 1600, Ink and watercolor on paper, volvelles
"De zifras" (On ciphers), fig. 27 at p. 128, The Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection ¶ link thanks to Elatia; I will get out there for this.

Albert Allis Hopkins (1869-1939); enormous production of 503 pages, of which pp 67-91 are devoted to wireless and other telegraphy, including a wireless code (adapted from American Express?) in which inter alia appears a selection of phrases regarding "purchase, payment and forwarding of goods" e.g., Findbar/Bootmaker will have goods ready; Finitely / If you can get our dresses from dressmaker and forward to us here before we sail, pay for them; otherwise do not receive them); information on cable/wireless messaging, rates, etc. ¶ see in particular p87, Marconi Telegraph Communication Chart (for January 1910), "posted in companionway to show possibilities of communication for one month" between ships at sea, on their diagonal courses between various starting points (e.g., Montreal, Rotterdam, Cuxhaven). ¶ Several photographs of wireless apparatus, etc.

John Arthur Barry, "Stopped on the Long Stretch," The Strand Magazine 14:80 (August 1897) : 162ff

"45 top-level domain codes… evoke thoughts…" ¶ page features other views and good information, all courtesy wildbear

sigh. includes an OCR'ed version of the Ango-American Telegraphic Code

I come to Galton in connection with "ekphrastic telegraphy," a concept that broadly covers coding and telegraphic communication of visual information. The Galton intersection includes his fingerprint identification (and potential for code), and his system to describe images by cipher. He captures the entire profile of a Greek girl in 343 small circles, described by a cipher of 271 letters, of which 79 letters suffice to describe the complex shape of her eye in profile : URkkk kklll mSVap ponmn mmlmm mlmlm llmZZ VnTnn mnmmm mmmlm mmnZZ Tjjjj jjkke chmmn mnun [sic] ononZ . ¶ find on this site his “The Just-Perceptible Difference” Proceedings of the Royal Institution 14 (January 27, 1893)

means "Cotton eight quarter, don't sell." ex Alexander Jones, Historical Sketch of the Electric Telegraph (1852); Google scan. ¶ and this, pp171-171 : "To expedite transmission, the communications are made as brief as possible, by the elision of letters, and syllables, and sometimes of half a word; besides which, many conventional signs are made use of. ‘We have,’ says Mr. Walker, ‘a signal for the period or full stop and for paragraphs; and we have one for underlining words. And we have many very valuable special signals. There is also a signal among the clerks for laughing, and one for the whistle of astonishment.’"

from "Pictures by Telegraph," on system of W. H. Lowd, in Scientific American Supplement, No. 1028 (September 14, 1895): pp 16432-43 . Lowd seems to have been interested in systems, as he was also associated with patent US1354437 (1920), Train Classification and Number Indicator

Ben Schott's op-ed column at NY Times (2 August 2009). ¶ Thousands (not "dozens") of different codes were issued, most privately. includes selections from the The Anglo-American Telegraphic Code to cheapen telegraphy and to furnish a complete cypher, adapted to use in general correspondence; including business, social, political and all other subjects of correspondence. Third Edition; New York, 1891; scan at Google Books here : http://books.google.com/books?id=r4tKAAAAMAAJ

Bothal, Cowpen, Davison's, Maude… Boldon, Dean's Primrose, Hebburn, Holmside, Lambton, New Leverson's, Pelaw Main… These are grouped names of mines encountered in the Code Télégraphique Privé. Nouvelle Edition (1901), Bessler, Waechter & Co., Newcastle-on-Tyne. One would specify output of a specific mine or mines.

"…the Koran, say, or books on telegraphic code, dog breeding, or ocean tides. There's a Russian grammar, a medical dictionary, and Lighthouses of the Maine Coast. A hand-painted sign hangs from the ceiling: SILENCE." ¶ from J. D. McClatchy, on Edna St. Vincent Millay her Steepletop home in Austerlitz, New York in his American Writers at Home (Library of America, 2004) ¶ the two books were code dictionaries, not books "on" codes : Liebèr's (Five Letter American) Telegraphic Code (1915) and The ABC Code (1915 printing, presumably 5th edition).

ex G Ager, The Telegram Code (1880)

"Electronic repository and bibliography of articles, books and papers on topics in machine translation and computer-based translation tools." Maintained by John Hutchins. ¶ a missing link (because there appears to have been no overlap between telegraph and MT people), might have involved earlier telegraphic codes, particularly polyglot codes where 5L codewords functioned as interlingua, and phrases were arranged at least in part topically

describes a manuscript code "by or for Ernest Liebold, who, as Henry Ford’s longtime personal and general secretary, managed Henry’s business, legal, and financial affairs." ¶ the post, by The Henry Ford archivist Rebecca Bizonet, is dated 27 May 09

a page in the artist's own website

There are signals for the angry: “Keep clear of me.” There are signals for the frustrated: “I have received faulty instructions.” And of course there are signals for the weary and the Friday-afternoon defeated: “I am dragging anchor”; “I require a tug”; “I am ending maneuvers early.” ¶ article by Randy Kennedy, NY Times 21 November 2006

"...She explained that she has a private cable code, and if her agents in New York or San Francisco are in trouble with two or three young girls, about whom inquiries are being made, they cable to her and arrangement are made to have the young Americans shipped off... [to] Hong-Kong..." ¶ several references to business by "cable" – and some colorful writing, too – in this volume. ¶ ex Mrs Archibald Mackirdy and W. N. Willis, The White Slave Market (London, 1912): 56-57

"He possesses what three-quarters of the individuals most liberally endowed with a sense of their own importance do not have: cable addresses in Bombay, New York, Marseille, and London, and a private cable code... There are false men of action — he is one of them." ¶ Paul Nizan, Aden, Arabie (1968), Google Book scan

"Since then I have had the legs sawed off of my desk, so that those literary beggars [rats], who delight to eat up one's valuable papers, should not climb in and make a meal off of my private cable code—a thing which they started to do some time ago." ex Joseph Earle Stevens, Yesterdays in the Philippines (1898) : 50-51 (Google Book scan)

Is a Private Code Desirable?—How Codes are Worked Out ¶ "The mistake made by most exporters," said the foreign manager of a textile organization, "is that they don't like to pay the first cost of having a special code system prepared for them. Ours cost $350. Yet it saved its initial expense in the first seven months" ... "If the exporter wants to make his own code, books can be obtained at a cost of $25.00 on which to base it." ¶ Thorough explanation, in an unlikely place! ¶ Printers' Ink 106:6 (February 6, 1919) : 57-60

"...The trilinear form of chart lends itself admirably to the investigation and demonstration of such problems as those involving alloys containing three metals, chemical compounds containing three elements, concrete mixtures containing three ingredients, food rations containing three dietetic elements, etc." ¶ Allan C. Haskell, How to Make and Use Graphic Charts (New York, 1920) : chapter 7 ¶ may pertain to three-facet tables for codeword construction ¶ read further to pp 32-33 extract from Brady (1918), reference to theory of color in devising a "gas mixture triangle" (sounds like hexadecimal color)

aphorism no 63. ¶ W. Ross Ashby (1903-1972) "was a British pioneer in the fields of Cybernetics and Systems Theory." ¶ fascinating material, presented beautifully in The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive — a monumental labor of love. click on BOOKSHELF to access Ashby's incredible journals, and INDEX to see his own index to same — 678 keywords, "code" among them

prolific and interesting composer, who has employed telegraphic codes in his work. a favorite (non telegraphic) work is [040] spinoza, available as "a thing like us" — "comprised of two separate parts of about 45 minutes each based respectively on the definitions of the emotions from the 3rd part of the Ethics, and on a letter about free will. The sound world is made up of voice and harpsichord (setting of the Latin text), percussion (paper and skin) , glass-sine tones , live sample manipulation of the singer and actors voices as well, raw wave based electronic sounds."

experimental music. see texts > electromatic (retrospective program notes); also "Telegraphic Language" (unpublished 1991), devoted mainly to Marinetti's idea of a "a poetic practice in which words immediately signify an eternal and universal
truth" : nothing immediate about coded telegraphic message practice, of course

Gripenstierna was grandson of Christopher Polhem, Swedish engineer and creator of a mechanical alphabet. article authored by Bengt Beckman, appeared in Cryptologia (April 2002)

author of Code Poems (1982), included in recent anthology "Hannah Weiner’s Open House," edited by Patrick Durgin (Kenning Editions, 2008). review at http://bostonreview.net/BR33.2/mcsweeney.php

telegraphic and cable codes, signal codes