Until recently, Samuel Morland's A New Method of Cryptography (1666) has been relatively unknown compared with famous works of John Wilkins or John Falconer published in the same century. I found TNA SP106/6 contains ciphers based on the printed template adapted from this book. See my new article, "Samuel Morland's "New Cipher" Applied in Instructions for Charles II's Ambassador".
Very interesting. This is the the earliest example of columnar transposition I've even come across. I always thought it appeared in the early 1900's.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments. As for columnar transposition, it was also described in John Falconer, Cryptomenysis Patefacta (1685), p.62.
Deletehttps://archive.org/details/cryptomenysispat00falc/page/62/mode/2up?view=theater
Wow. I guess a lot of commonly known cipher schemes are much older than I thought. It's also interesting that the book describes a word-based transposition that's similar to the route ciphers used in the American Civil War.
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