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Home Papers:
17 June 2010
Telegraphs and code words
Code words for the day of the year
[Some enterprising telegraph operator] realised that telegraph senders charged per word rather than per character—thus transmitting “it is on” would cost the same as “raynor is maschalophilous.”
For example ‘crisp is short hand for “can you recommend to me a good female cook?” and ‘flank means “a fire is raging here. please send engine.”’ But then the operator created 366 (even leap year!) codes to cover every single day.
Have a happy Joltingly.