The Cryptographic Imagination

Abstract

a Jehlen. I owe special thanks to Don Pease, who came through for me in the clinch with his timely and brilliant reading. Martin Harries, John Kleiner, John Limon, and Michael Bell had the dubious distinction of serving as my secret readers, and, often, secret writers, and my debts to them for their tact, intellectual generosity, and acuity are large. I'm also grate ful for the friendship of Michael Bell, who not only gave me the benefit of his critical insight, but who has been for years a wise mentor and hec toring friend. And Stephen Rachman has been a peerless companion in all things literary, serving variously as cheerleader, sometime collaborator, and grotesque twin.My greatest thanks must go to Cassandra Cleghorn, without whose as sistance this book would not exist. Her presence, her readings alone, ren dered vividly luminous the many mysteries of transcendentalism in which we were immersed. ixThe Cryptographic Imagination the National Security Agency (NSA). Poe, for example, was from adoles cence interested in crypts, writing, and the relation between the two, but his sense of the scope and implications of that relation greatly expanded after December 1839, when he began submitting a series of unsigned pieces on cryptography and conundrums to a short-lived Philadelphia newspaper, Alexander's Weekly Messenger. In the first of these pieces, "Enigmatical and Conundrumical," Poe promised "that if any reader submitted an example of secret writing in which arbitrary symbols were substituted for letters of the alphabet, no such cipher could be propounded which he would be un able to solve." 1 For the next five months, Poe published solutions to what he maintained were all the ciphers that had been submitted to him, along with some explanations of the nature of cryptography. In May 1840, Poe's association with the newspaper ceased, but he returned to the subject a year later, publishing a long signed article in Graham's Magazine entitled "A Few Words on Secret Writing" (July 1841). Here Poe gives his account of the articles from Alexander's:In one of the weekly papers of this city, about eighteen months ago, the writer of this article had occasion to speak of the application of a rigorous method in all forms of thought-of its advantages-of the extension of its use even to what is considered the operation of pure fancy-and thus, subsequently, of the solution of cipher. He even ventured to assert that no cipher, of the charac ter above specified, could be sent to the address of the paper, which he would not be able to resolve. This challenge excited, most unexpectedly, a very lively interest among the numerous readers of the journal. Letters were poured in upon the editor from all parts of the country; and many of the writers of these epistles were so convinced of the impenetrability of their mysteries, as to be word-pattern tricks lead scholars to pirate's treasure. But directions to treasure are themselves a coded algorithm for unburying. Two men and blackfella ser vant, applying human ingenuity, measured paces, ...