Possibly 😀

There’s even a subtle Scottish family tradition cultural allusion there, if you work it out fully.

tried; can't work out the spacing or direction, unless it's mostly composed of K, G, S and W

bsky.app/profile/jako...

The annoying thing was Morse is anachronistic. I also developed a design using the Popham maritime flag codes, which were contemporary, and allowed beautiful phrases like “Shall I burn the enemy?” and "America alone". But they were too garish to work with that design. Another piece some day...

There was also a semaphore code in use at that time, including a tower in Halifax, but as far as I can tell the code is completely lost, and even pictures of the towers are sketchy.

I wonder if there might be something about it in early signal processing works? They might be close enough that it hasn’t been completely lost yet?

OMG thanks for the prompting, I think I found most of it!!! parkscanadahistory.com/series/ha/64...

Im glad my random memory of terminology from an error correcting codes unit in I’m pretty sure an undergrad cryptography course was helpful now I’m gonna read that

This is exactly what I remember seeing described elsewhere. I think the actual code book -- numbers to meaning -- has been lost (it probably changed a lot, anyway). But this is what we will have had here. parkscanadahistory.com/series/ha/64...

The book earlier in the thread has some lovely insights: the army and the navy each had different systems and didn't share. And the code books and meanings were military secrets. Even the midway posts didn't know the meanings, they just relayed the messages. Just fascinating stuff.

I *think* the semaphore code used these masts with cross-pieces on, shown at the top of the Citadel. They're shown on a bank note from around 1810, so the time is right. But I do not know for sure. archives.novascotia.ca/halifax/arch...

let me get my decoder coin, then ...