The Secrets of the Chaocipher Finally Revealed

nickpelling2 writes "In 1918, John F. Byrne invented a truly amazing cipher system, called 'The Chaocipher,' that fit inside a small cigar box, could be operated by a ten-year-old, yet produced practically unbreakable ciphertext (arguably even stronger than the Nazi Enigma machine). But now, thanks to the efforts of Chaocipher fan Moshe Rubin and the generous gift of Byrne's cryptographic effects by his daughter-in-law Pat Byrne to the National Cryptologic Museum, the secrets of the Chaocipher are finally starting to be revealed — it's a great story. To accompany Moshe Rubin's excellent textual description of the Chaocipher, I've posted a 30-second animation of the Chaocipher in action to YouTube, just in case anyone wants to see the most devious cipher of the 20th century in action (sort of)."

Comments

Re:Video link

[CarpetShark]

Allow me to spare you the googling :D

And what if we wanted to google it, eh? Did you stop to think of that before posting your own god-damned link?

Starker! Zis is die CHAOCIPHER!

[grcumb]

"Starker! Zis is die CAOCIPHER! The CAOCIPHER doesn't go 'PHTHHHHBBBBTTT!!!'"

"But Siegfried, look. See, right here betveen ze CHGFYTTSSXHS und ze KJHJHLRUUIGE."

"Ah. Yes. Vell zen, carry on."

[It's funnier when you say it out loud. Trust me. Your workmates will love you for it.]

Re:Starker! Zis is die CHAOCIPHER!

[BazilBBrush]

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".

Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k".

This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f".

This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the language is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords containing "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

Unt Ze drem vil kum tru.

Re:The 20th Century?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except if the century ended in 1999 in which case it was the 19th.

Please do not breed. It would also be appreciated if you do not vote or drive on public roads.

Re:Video link

[Nieriko]

I don't know what are you complaining about, you can still google it. Here is the link

Re:BS Karma whoring

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but sparing Slashdot readers from having to read TFA is a much greater service than saving them from having to Google.

Re:BS Karma whoring

[pspahn]

You do realize that for someone to find the comment posting the video link, they already waded through a bunch of silly comments and garbage.

Sparing /. readers from /. itself is sometimes the best service.