
500 years ago, a German abbot wrote a book on communication with spirits (1998) - Petiver
http://cryptome.org/jya/tri-crack.htm
======
lucb1e
A bit anticlimactic.

TL;DR: A book published 500 years ago contained an obscure message. It wasn't
actually "encryped" by modern standards, it was simply as encoded similar to
ASCII (i.e. each number represents a character). The numbers were assigned
characters in reverse alphabetical order. Converting them to letters again,
you get random sentences. No hidden knowlege.

The more interesting part is perhaps that three people discovered it over the
years, independently of each other. The first one actually encoded (encrypted?
There is nothing said about the method) the solution so nobody could actually
check whether he cracked it. More recently two other people also solved it and
verified that the previous person also cracked it and wasn't talking nonsense.

------
lotharbot
I found it interesting that three people cracked the code independently: Dr.
Ernst, in 1996, Dr. Reeds, in 1998, and Heidel, in 1676. But Heidel's work
wasn't understood because he encrypted it, and Ernst's work was overlooked
because it was published in an obscure journal.

Dr. Reeds' unique contribution wasn't in solving the problem, but in
communicating the solution in an accessible way. A lot of successful companies
have been the same way -- they might not have been the first ones to solve a
problem, but they brought their solution to the masses effectively and
accessibly.

~~~
eru
It's not about who first discovers or invents something, but about who does it
last. Ie who communicates so well that afterwards no one else has to go and
discover it on their own.

------
versteegen
The relevance (to Nash's death): "Books one and two were clearly systems for
encoding messages and were the first books written on cryptography, Dr. Reeds
said." Very interesting if true.

The joke:

    
    
      Trithemius offered plenty of hints, Dr. Reeds said. "He says that
      there are elaborate calculations that you have to do, and he tells you
      that you have to read the tables," he said. When Trithemius said that
      people can send messages without using letters he probably just meant
      they could use number codes instead.
    

Here's the article describing the solution:

Reeds, Jim. "Solved: the ciphers in book III of Trithemius's steganographia."
Cryptologia 22.4 (1998): 291-317
[http://profs.sci.univr.it/~giaco/download/Watermarking-
Obfus...](http://profs.sci.univr.it/~giaco/download/Watermarking-
Obfuscation/Trithemius.pdf)

The cipher used in book III is very simple, however. Throw out null values,
reduce modulo 25, and map in reverse alphabetical order to Latin letters. The
first two books of the _Steganographia_ contain a "mind numbing variety" of
other encoding methods.

------
tabrischen
Who says the Germans have no sense of humor ?

~~~
seqastian
everyone but the germans.

------
edem
I don't get it. Is the book a box which contains a box full of garbage?

~~~
lnanek2
Seems pretty useful for me. The first couple books were how to write in code.
The last book was an example or writing in code. The first code was just a
basic letter test. When writing LCD drivers the first thing I do is output
color bars, very useful for making sure everything is working.

The second code was a demonstration of how you could have a messenger carry
something that they don't know about. It said the bearer is a thief. This is
pretty much what modern internet commerce is based on. Communicating in code
(SSL) with messengers that internet routers in between can't read (credit card
details, etc.).

The third code was Christian prayer, which proved the demonology plain text
wasn't something he really supported. The demonology plain text was what made
it popular and passed on, however, so even that was useful in that if the book
was just all encoded numbers, no one would have printed it.

So the box wasn't garbage and the contents weren't garbage. What makes you
think they were?

~~~
edem
Maybe I did not get the text right but it seemed that he wrote some encryption
algorithm and encrypted the text with the brown fox which is meaningless.

------
mikerichards
totally offtopic, but isn't german really english...from like 5 thousand years
ago?

~~~
iagooar
As much as English is German from 5000 years ago...

Actually, the ancestor of the English language was most probably brought to
Britain by Germanic people from what nowadays would be the region between
Netherlands and north west Germany.

Plus, it wasn't 5000, but maybe about 3000 years ago.

~~~
rtz12
It was only about 1600 years ago. Plus the region where the Saxons, Angles,
Jutes and Frisians lived was quite a lot bigger. From the north of the
Netherlands up to northern Denmark. You can still see the similarities when
you compare High German, Low German, Frisian and English words.

