Google recently put up a large collection of images from Life Magazine: and as you’d expect, various Netizens are poring over the visually-rich archive to find anything unexpected, such as this unidentified number-based ciphertext from 1957. Frustratingly, searches of the Life archive seem to be limited to a maximum of 200 results, so you have to use a little less brute force to find interesting things than you might otherwise employ.
I found some pictures on simple steganography, such as a 1941 FBI demonstration showing a cover letter and the hidden UV message written between the lines, and even a message hidden in the lining of an envelope. Or perhaps you’d be like me and prefer seeing Groucho Marx hiding a message on a lady’s back?
Hey, I’m only scratching the surface: the Entropic Memes blogger (“Nemo de Monet“) dug far deeper, and uncovered what appears to be a faked up FBI cipher (a monoalphabetic simple substitution cipher with fake text, nothing fancy) from 1944, and – far more interestingly – an early-WWII transposition cipher from 24 July 1940, complete with the encrypting worksheet all in place. Our chum Nemo suspects that the “Dunn” in the message was Fritz Duquesne, part of the Duquesne spy ring. Not really my period, but fascinating stuff nonetheless…