Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area
This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an integral part of the GAW experience for many of us.
Based on its evolving needs and plenty of user feedback, we are trying to bring some order and institute some rules. Please make sure you read these rules and participate in the spirit of this community.
Rules for General Chat
-
Be respectful to each other. This is of utmost importance, and comments may be removed if deemed not respectful.
-
Avoid long drawn out arguments. This should be a place to relax, not to waste your time needlessly.
-
Personal anecdotes, puzzles, cute pics/clips - everything welcome
-
Please do not spam at the top level. If you have a lot to post each day, try and post them all together in one top level comment
-
Try keep things light. If you are bringing in deep stuff, try not to go overboard.
-
Things that are clearly on-topic for this board should be posted as a separate post and not here (except if you are new and still getting the feel of this place)
-
If you find people violating these rules, deport them rather than start a argument here.
-
Feel free to give feedback as these rules are expected to keep evolving
In short, imagine this thread to be a local community hall where we all gather and chat daily. Please be respectful to others in the same way
Rules For the rest of the Site also accessible on the sidebar.
--
I love to read about Thomas Jefferson & Lewis & Clark- just found this, about a letter where TJ explains to ML what to do if they need to secretly communicate.
thought some might find this helpful. also think it shows just how smart (autist;) Thomas Jefferson was,
and how important secret codes were.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-40-02-0220-0001
"The tableau-style cipher system that Jefferson drew up for Lewis dated from the sixteenth century (Weber, United States Diplomatic Codes, 10–12; David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing, rev. ed. [New York, 1996], 133–7, 145–51).
The letters of the alphabet appear in order in each row, but the position of the letters shifts from row to row. (Jefferson included the ampersand as, in effect, a 27th letter of the alphabet.) In his first trial of the cipher, at the top of the grid he numbered the columns, leaving the one on the far left unnumbered (see Document i). The user would work through the intended message letter by letter, finding the first letter in the column on the left and reading across to the column numbered “1,” then finding the second letter in the left column and reading across to column 2, and so on. On reaching the 27th letter of the message, the user would begin again with column 1.
Jefferson experimentally encrypted a passage that was 27 letters long, “the man whose mind on virtue bent,” to get the result “ujh qft epxbp yvas dd maknpa zcmu.” He followed that exercise with a brief set of directions. He revised the instructions to incorporate the usage of a key word, a device that was, like the form of the cipher itself, well established (Kahn, Codebreakers, 148). Now instead of finding the numbered column to match the letter’s position in the message, he decided on a key word—“artichoke”—and aligned the letters of the message to be encoded with the letters of the key, repeating the key word as many times as necessary to complete the message."
That’s very interesting, thanks for sharing.
you're welcome, love to share with you guys/family doesn't read much;)
And it's totally relevant; Jefferson lived at Monticello for 17 years after his presidency. and there are a lot of Q clues on the L & C trail- example; one of the statues is 717 tons...