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A woman bought a vintage dress. It had a secret pocket with a mysterious note
- rappatic 3y agoThe article hints at, but doesn't really discuss, the concept of information entropy [1]. Each word in that message has a very high entropy because it conveys a lot of information. I read an XKCD What If article [2] a while back that gives a really cool and intuitive introduction to the concept. I don't know all that much about computer science so it was a great way to get learning more. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) [2] https://what-if.xkcd.com/34/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/34/
- neilv 3y ago> As part of Chan’s research, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provided old weather maps that helped him determine the precise date of the weather observations in the coded note: May 27, 1888. When the article introduced the weather report idea, I was hoping that this note was spy communications made to look like weather reports. (Maybe the coded note wound up in a pocket because Elizabeth Bennet was joking with her sisters, pretending to be a spy.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- belltaco 3y agoThe note seems to have more than two lines? Have they decoded the other ones as well.
- Symbiote 3y agoThe code referred to is a "commercial code". There's a scan of a page from a 1910 code on Wikipedia. Amazing that a phrase like "Confined yesterday, Twins, both dead, Mother not expected to live" was given a single code word ("Annosus"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_code_(communications) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_code_(communication... "Unicode — The Universal Telegraphic Code Book" https://archive.org/details/unicodeuniversa00unkngoog/mode/2up?ref=ol&view=theater https://archive.org/details/unicodeuniversa00unkngoog/mode/2...
- Symbiote 3y agoFrom Unicode, it's interesting but not surprising that so many of the codes are for significant personal and business problems, like the birth of children, missed travel connections etc. "Diota" "Amputation is considered unnecessary". "Annexus" "Confined to-day, Twins, one alive, a girl, Mother not expected to live". Towards the back of the book is shown a very early 'DNS'; abbreviated addresses for businesses. "Supplies, London" meant "Junior Army and Navy Stores Limited", a bit like a generic supplies.co.uk. "Jowoto, London" meant "Johnson, Walker & Tolhurst".
- bombcar 3y agoYou have to remember that telegrams were expensive, you'd not just send one for anything; it would be for major events (like a birth, or death) and so encoding the variations of that would be worth it. In fact, it's just bitmapping.
- sorokod 3y agoBTW "Confined" has the meaning of being in labour, child birth.
- OJFord 3y agoOr almost. They're both euphemistic really - confined to bed; soon to labour.
- kristianp 3y agoMan, as a parent this chills me. Before modern medicine the statistics of deaths in childbirth were scary.
- stefantalpalaru 3y ago[dead]
- Damogran6 3y agoDeath was something a lot more people spent a lot more time with than we do now. It was 23 years between the death of my last grandparent and the death of my father...and another 16 year til the death of my Father in law.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoAnyone have a link to a document with the codes?
- coldpie 3y agoA couple links from the article leads to Chen's paper, which I think contains everything you would want: https://canwin-datahub.ad.umanitoba.ca/data/publication/breaking-silk-dress-cryptogram https://canwin-datahub.ad.umanitoba.ca/data/publication/brea...
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoA previous comment had this link: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc1.cu55719287 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc1.cu55719287 I think that's it.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoCool. Found it on archive.org as well: https://archive.org/details/angloamericante00yorkgoog https://archive.org/details/angloamericante00yorkgoog
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoReminds me of when I first encountered the extraordinarily compressed 12 bit "words" in a ARINC717 data stream, where they're conserving bits that are written as-is, serially. Like three decades of computing passed it by. If something has four distinct values, it gets two bits. Then, right on top of that: is it a syncro response curve? Output the binary for the curve function. On and on, for thousands of "words", all jammed together. I used to imagine being a future researcher, trying to decode these big blocks of undifferentiated binary, the amount of legwork I'd have to accomplish to get just a few layers deep.
- userbinator 3y agoASN.1 PER - used widely in telco, notably GSM standards, is also extremely dense. Given what they charged for data, it's not surprising they'd want an encoding that's as efficient as possible for the overhead.
- Sai_ 3y agoWonder if this can be used to communicate with LLMs to reduce token costs.
- sitkack 3y agoThere was some chatter about 9 months ago I think when folks were using compression, unicode and all sorts of weird hacks to increase the context window. This is rather recent, but in the same vein. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/llmlingua-innovating-llm-efficiency-with-prompt-compression/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/llmlingua-inno... https://twitter.com/VictorTaelin/status/1642664054912155648 https://twitter.com/VictorTaelin/status/1642664054912155648
- Animats 3y agoAh, yes, telegraphic codes. I once found a large code book for one of those in the stacks of a Stanford library. Every "word" had four syllables, and mapped to a longer phrase. In the book was a loose piece of paper with a note that the telegraph company was changing their billing rules and that only known words would count as one word for billing purposes. Anything else would be charged at a higher rate for random letters and numbers. Here's a typical telegraphic code, "The Anglo-American Code to Cheapen Telegraphy and Furnish a Complete Cypher".[1] [1] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc1.cu55719287 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc1.cu55719287
- hinkley 3y agoIt’s easy to judge in retrospect, but shouldn’t the slashes have been a clue? Once I saw them my first thought was this was a checklist and someone marked each line off as it was sent.
- mpeg 3y agoThe CNN article makes it seem like it was a mystery for a long time, but if you look at the original blog, it's clear in the comments that from the very beginning readers of the blog suggested it might be a telegraph code, but they didn't know exactly from which book.
- hinkley 3y agoSome mysteries are from lack of suggestions, some from lack of listening.
- sombragris 3y agoCNN blocks ad-blockers (seemingly): > Browser Blocked > We apologize, but your web browser is configured in such a way that it is preventing this site from implementing required components that protect your privacy and allow you to view and change your privacy settings. This functionality is required for privacy legislation in your region. > We recommend you use a different browser or disable the “EasyList Cookie” filter from your “Content Filtering” settings (found under “Settings” -> “Shields” in the Brave Browser). UPDATE: The blocking is triggered by the "I don't care about cookies" browser extension (Firefox); disabling the extension on the site gets me past the block. Utterly stupid move on CNN's part.
- adventured 3y agoUsing uBlock Origin [on Firefox Win10] and didn't have any problems.
- ale42 3y agoExact same for me... didn't notice anything strange. I also erase cookies when I close the browser, might also perhaps have an impact depending on previous visits to CNN.
- SoftTalker 3y agoMaybe try the "lite" version ... substitute "lite" for "www" i.e.: https://lite.cnn.com/2024/01/15/us/antique-dress-maine-encrypted-message-cec/index.html https://lite.cnn.com/2024/01/15/us/antique-dress-maine-encry...
- bmacho 3y agohttps://archive.ph/2000/https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/15/us/antique-dress-maine-encrypted-message-cec/index.html https://archive.ph/2000/https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/15/us/an...
- bee_rider 3y agoI block ads, don’t really mind when a site doesn’t feel like serving me as a result. I’m intentionally not accepting their ads-for-content trade and asking what they’ll send for nothing. If that’s nothing, fair enough. I am surprised nowadays, given how bad the trade has gotten, that people are interested in discussing their content.
- INTPenis 3y agoWhy use Omit instead of t56? Or better yet, write the values in a pre-defined order and just do 56 0.08 32 no 12. Why did they feel the need to use actual words?
- kevingadd 3y agoCan imagine this approach being less error-prone for laymen, in the same way that passphrases (word word word word word) can be friendlier than passwords (word12345678).
- renewiltord 3y agoPresumably has built in error-correction. You don't want to go from t56 "Cholera, family dead, stock market crash" to t66 "Buy farmland, rains predicted good" in one typo.
- Mogzol 3y agoThey meant t56 as in "temperature is 56", not as in every random phrase gets assigned a jumble of numbers and letters. Though I suppose error-correction could still apply.
- Symbiote 3y agoActual words were easier for the telegraph operator to send and receive so they were charged less than a scramble of letters or nonsense. Words were charged individually, but could be up to 10 letters long. It makes sense to avoid the shortest words to get some error correction, "— ." = "T E" could be misheard as "—." = "N". The international regulations limited the cheaper rate messages to only certain languages, of which one was Latin, so the codebooks used that to avoid confusion with modern languages. (See my other comment and read the introduction in the linked book.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- INTPenis 3y agoOh so words were charged indiviually. That's strange but ok. So that means if you could hypothetically serialize/compress the whole data set into one word you'd be most cost effective.
- UberFly 3y agoWas hoping for secret treasure, but that was still very interesting. Thank you for the post.
- yurytom 3y agoAnyone tried it to get access to Satoshi wallet?
- russfink 3y agoBut why stored in a secret pocket?
- dools 3y agoPockets are for the help, this is a nice dress so a secret pocket is probably the only type of pocket they'd want.
- toyg 3y agoStill, why would an elegant woman carry a weather report encoded in telegraph jargon...?
- WeAddValue 3y agoMaybe she didn't know it was a weather report encoded in telegraph jargon and instead thought it was some kind of crypto puzzle that she kept handy to work on in idle moments.
- pimlottc 3y agoIt could have been part of her job: > Rivers Cofield also notes that the dress – although beautiful and fancy to our modern eyes – was not exactly what someone would wear to a ball. It was more like the ‘business casual’ of the day, and to her that does indicate it might have been worn to work. > Chan has also documented that a number of women worked as clerical staff at the Washington, D.C. offices for the Army Signal Service in the 1880s. https://www.noaa.gov/heritage/stories/cryptogram-in-silk-dress-tells-weather-story https://www.noaa.gov/heritage/stories/cryptogram-in-silk-dre...
- thaumasiotes 3y agoAs dools notes, female clothing doesn't usually have pockets. So if you want a pocket at all, it will probably be a secret pocket.
- Sprocklem 3y ago
- hashtag-til 3y agoIt’s encoded words for weather forecast. Save you a click.
- stevage 3y agoThe story is pretty interesting, and definitely worth the click.
- djur 3y agoWhy would someone encode words for a weather forecast?
- mkl 3y agoAs the article explains, it's to save on telegraph fees, which were charged per word.
- djur 3y agoSeems like OP didn't save me a click, then. Dang.
- pmarreck 3y agoIt was an early form of compression.
- jandrese 3y agoTelegraph operators preferred operating on real words, so you had to encode your data into English words to save on transmission costs.
- amelius 3y agoI expected something like: "I'm a poor worker in an Asian sweatshop. Please get me out of this place."
- dctoedt 3y agoAh yes, the Daffy Duck fortune-cookie joke! https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-help-im-being-held-prisoner-in-a-chinese-blank/252953 https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-help-im-being-he...
- dudeinjapan 3y agoThis has happened tho: https://www.wired.com/2008/08/iphone-ships-wi/ https://www.wired.com/2008/08/iphone-ships-wi/
- whatshisface 3y agoIn the Victorian era the sweatshops were in England.
- mertd 3y agoThese garments aren't washed with water?
- ecommerceguy 3y agoAAMOF FWIW YMMV but SSDD
- weiserdaniel38 3y agoSending 10 words costed a dollar,which according to an inflation calendar is around $27 today.
- teruakohatu 3y agoI am sure telegraph spam was low during that era.
- rokkitmensch 3y agoMy wife once bought a Burberry coat for 100 bucks off Poshmark and it came with a free gram of rather nice cocaine!
- eutropia 3y agoThe cocaine is the most sure indicator that it was genuine!
- helloplanets 3y agoI wonder how the legal nuances of unknowingly mailing vintage cocaine to someone would work. Would the seller still be held accountable for this?
- rokkitmensch 3y agoThis was pre fentanyl contamination of the supply. You gotta have your head screwed on even more tightly these days...
- pmarreck 3y agoAge-old compression! Nice!
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago"You won't believe what happened next"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- timthelion 3y agoIt's always a bit surprising to me how little monitary value very old items can have.
- WalterBright 3y agoSeems like the code books would be useful for phone texting. (Note that they're actual words, not acronyms like lmao.)
- iambateman 3y agoMeanwhile…someday our great great grandchildren will find a MacBook from “the early 20’s” and when they open it they will see a file opened to VSCode with cryptic symbols on it. “Iran?” they’ll wonder, “perhaps it was code for the ongoing conflict with Iran.” But in fact it will just be someone who literally died trying to get Webpack to work on a website for pirated Tarantino films.
- pstuart 3y ago"drink more ovaltine"
- kevinday 3y agohttps://www.noaa.gov/heritage/stories/cryptogram-in-silk-dress-tells-weather-story https://www.noaa.gov/heritage/stories/cryptogram-in-silk-dre... This is a slightly better and more detailed version of this story.
- indus 3y agoWhen I got married, I received telegraph message “twenty-five” from many distant friends and relatives. Cheaper to send a two word greeting rather than a fully decoded message.
- slyall 3y agoI just finished the book "The Children’s Blizzard" by David Laskin. The Blizzard occurred in January 1888 and the book gives a good picture of the state of US weather forecasting at the time ( technology, logistics and politics). https://lauragerold.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-childrens-blizzard-by-david-larkin.html https://lauragerold.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-childrens-blizz...
- Alifatisk 3y ago> He told CNN he looked at 170 code books and none of them matched the message. What’s code book? Would love to get one of them.
- butz 3y agoIn case of "Chat control" pull out your Universal Telegraphic Code Book.
- ethunt 3y agoTLDR; - A woman named Sara Rivers Cofield bought an antique Victorian dress from the 1880s at a thrift store in Maine. - She later discovered a secret pocket inside the dress that contained two pieces of paper with seemingly random words written on them like "Bismark, omit, leafage, buck, bank". - For years, amateur cryptologists online tried unsuccessfully to decode the mysterious notes. - In 2018, a researcher named Wayne Chan stumbled upon the code online and began studying 19th century weather codes and telegraph communication. - He eventually deduced that the notes contained a weather report from May 27, 1888 in shorthand code used by the US Army Signal Corps for economical telegraph transmission. - The code cracked a 135-year old mystery hidden in the dress and provided a glimpse into how weather data was collected and shared in the late 19th century.
- dTal 3y ago>As a vintage costume collector, Rivers Cofield recognized it as a dress from the 1880s — but despite its age, its delicate embroidery, bronze silk and metallic buttons appeared intact... She haggled the price down to $100 from $125. The price was higher than she usually pays... A price that low for something this old, intact, and beautiful astounds me.