16/10/2022

A Codebook for Encoding Commerce Info into 13 Figures

I acquired a codebook for encoding sentences for commerce into 13 figures. Such a kind of codebook was common during the age of telegraphy (see "Figure Codes and Code Condensers -- Data Compression Before Computer Age"). For this particular codebook, an example 13-digit figure 011230135435 (excepting the 13th check digit) may consist of:
01 We offer you
123 articles (to be agreed between correspondents)
013 to be shipped in January-February in five cases
54 at 0.63 yen (presumably per some agreed unit)
35 This is the best possible offer we can get for it.

As it turned out, this is the same as an attachment in Chapter XL of 山口造酒・白井健次『英文商業通信寶鑑 附十三数字組立暗号電報』(1922), noted in an article in Japanese.






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