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ShareNew York: A code that stumped Thomas Jefferson and other cryptologists for over two centuries has finally been cracked, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thrusday. The cipher--sent to Jefferson in 1801 by mathematician Robert Patterson as an example of the perfect code--piqued the interest of cryptologist Lawren Smithline, who tackled the jumble of letters using methods available in 19th century, although sped up with the help of computers.
Patterson set out to show the president and primary author of the Declaration of Independence what he deemed to be a nearly flawless cipher. "The art of secret writing," or writing in cipher, has "engaged the attention both of the states-man & philosopher for many ages," Patterson wrote. But, he added, most ciphers fall "far short of perfection."
To Patterson's view, a perfect code had four properties: It should be adaptable to all languages; it should be simple to learn and memorise; it should be easy to write and to read; and most important of all, "it should be absolutely inscrutable to all unacquainted with the particular key or secret for deciphering."
Patterson then included in the letter an example of a message in his cipher, one that would be so difficult to decode that it would "defy the united ingenuity of the whole human race," he wrote. There is no evidence that Jefferson, or anyone else for that matter, ever solved the code. But Jefferson did believe the cipher was so inscrutable that he considered having the state department use it, and passed it on to the ambassador to France, Robert Livingston.
The cipher finally met its match in Lawren Smithline, a 36-year-old mathematician. Smithline has a PhD in mathematics and now works professionally with cryptology at the Centre for Communications Research in Princeton.
A couple of years ago, Smithline's neighbour, who was working on a Jefferson project at Princeton University, told Smithline of Patterson's mysterious cipher.
The trick to solving the puzzle, meant knowing the following: the number of lines in each section, the order in which those lines were transcribed and the number of random letters added to each line.
To help vet his guesses, he turned to a tool not available during the 19th century: a computer algorithm. He used what's called "dynamic programming," which solves large problems by breaking puzzles down into smaller pieces and linking together the solutions.
After about a week of working on the puzzle, the numerical key to Mr. Patterson's cipher emerged -- 13, 34, 57, 65, 22, 78, 49. Using that digital key, he was able to unfurl the cipher's text: "In Congress, July Fourth, one thousand seven hundred and
seventy six. A declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. When in the course of human events..."
"Patterson played this little joke on Thomas Jefferson," said Smithline. "And nobody knew until
now."
