I f you are reading this page, you must have some interest in codes or secret writing. Many of you probably have already devised your own code to write notes to your closest friends and hide your secrets from the rest of the world. This desire for keeping information secret is not anything new. Not all communications need be secret, but may just be a way of communicating over a distance. Armies soon found a great need for communicating over distances to control the movement of their units.

The Bible mentions the use of the ram's horn to send signals. Even today the military uses the trumpet to signal such things as reveille (time to get up), retreat (take down the flag), and taps at a military funeral. The military's use of horns was common to the ancient civilizations. Other means of communication that have been used are bag-pipes, drums, flags, and lights.

The American Indians in the South West used smoke signals to signal between scouts and hunting or war parties. The US Calvary used a heliograph (a device which had a mirror attached to a handle) to signal with flashes of sun light between observers stationed upon mountains to send information about Indian movements to their base camps.

Even the birth of our nation began with a code message that signaled Paul Revere to begin his famous ride to warn that the British were coming. On April 18, 1775 the Old North Church's steeple was used to display two lanterns as a signal about British troop movements -- the code: One lantern if by land, and two lanterns if by sea.

Secret messages have probably been around for as long as there has been a written language. Of course some messages could have taken months to be sent from one end of an empire to another. The Greeks would shave a slave's head tattoo the message to his scalp. The slave would make his way from Egypt to Greece where his head would be shaved and the message read. Another method the Greeks used was to weave a long sash with letters that would line up to spell out a message only if the sash was wrapped around and around a certain size staff.

Juliet Caesar is credited with being the first to use the shifted alphabet to encode a message..
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B
The shifted alphabet above could be used to encode NOW IS THE TIME ... to PQY KU VJG VKOE ...

You may have written the message backwards mirror writing - SMIT EHT SI WON
Or maybe just reversed the letters in each word - WON SI EHT EMIT.

Most of us "invented" our own alphabets when we were in grade school. The code breaker would simply substitute letters for the symbols and go about decoding the message in the usual way.

ABC DE FGH FDIH ...

These pages explore various codes and ciphers that have been used throughout history, possible you have used one or more of these in grade school or a Scout.