Page 2 : Beale Ciphers Analyses

Dr. Carl Hammer

    Dr. Hammer was the first serious researcher of the Beale ciphers with academic credentials. He was Director, Computer Sciences, at Sperry Rand UNIVAC, at a time when this company was a major supplier of then-called "supercomputers" to the NSA. His position gave him access to the world's then most powerful computers and to the best cryptanalytical talent of the times, and he used these resources in a long term and concerted effort to solve the Beale codes.

    This website has obtained copyright permission from the Charles Babbage Institute of the University of Minnesota, the custodian of the Carl Hammer Papers, to reproduce two of Dr. Hammer's early studies of the Beale ciphers.

    The first of these is Signature Simulation and Certain Cryptographic Codes. It is a lengthy and detailed description of the earliest computer-assisted studies of the Beale codes. Some particularly interesting points and conclusions are the following:

• describes the formation of a study group in 1968 which eventually evolved into The Beale Cypher Association
• explains how a professional cryptanalyst might proceed
• explains why the Beale Cyphers were not constructed with the help of early random number tables, or by tossing coins or rolling dice
• ...  indicates once more the non-randomness of the Beale Cyphers
• ...  letter-counting seems to provide a better option for decoding B1
• ...  we can conclude with a very high degree of confidence that the keytext was not Latin
• ... Beale Cyphers 1 and 3 are "for real." They are not random doodles but do contain intelligence and messages of some sort. Further attempts at decoding are indeed warranted

    Throughout the 1970's and 80's, he studied the codes, published papers, and participated in symposiums. One of these was How did TJB encode B2?, published in the April 1979 issue of Cryptologia. In this paper, Dr. Hammer criticizes the cryptographic talent of TJB, with statements such as these:

• Evidently, the author of B2 was not at all that efficient
• Obviously the author of B2 ... "learned by doing"
• B2 was encoded in a grossly suboptimal manner, because the author did not care to produce a most efficient code and was probably not even familiar with such a concept
• ... indicate his preference for a seemingly lazy and very inefficient process
• He then encoded his cleartext, jumping randomly from one section of the keytext to another. ... we observed significant periodicities of lengths 3 and 5, as well as significant deviations between runs up and down. A casual inspection of B2 is quite convincing in this matter
• TJB was certainly not beyond making many clerical errors in his encoding process
• ... suggesting that "Uncle TJB" went about his task rather sloppily, to say the least
• TJB was not a professional cryptographer!
• TJB botched his job rather badly making numerous mistakes in the numbering of the words and in the selection of clever substitutes for missing letters. He also did not guard himself too well against attempts to break the cypher by probable word or letter substitutions, probably never even thought of it.

    Aside from these two papers on this website, his works are not published on the internet, but are referenced by several other authors. His papers were given to the Charles Babbage Institute and are accessible only with written authorization. These are some items regarding Beale:

Papers:

• Beale Cypher Symposium (April 15), Washington, D.C., "How did TJB encode B2", 1972-1981.
• Beale Cypher Association, Rossly, Virginia, 27 September 1986.
• Beale Cypher Symposium (Hammer, Judge Hart, and Mr. Mitchell), April 15, 1972

Tape recordings:

• Beale Cypher Symposium (Williams and Kahn), April 15, 1972.
• Beale Cypher Symposium (Frank Speh and Terry Kuch), April 15, 1972.
• Beale Cypher Symposium (Robert Caldwell and Mr. Chesson), April 15,1972.
• Beale Cypher Symposium (Hammer and Mr. Williams), April 15, 1972.

    An interesting quote is attributed to him: "The name of the first one to crack the Beale code will never be known. We will learn only the name of the second person to crack it - the one who follows directions to Beale's underground vault, and finds it empty."

Comment

    Our desktop computers of today are more powerful than Dr. Hammer's computers, and we have access to powerful generic software which did not exist then.

    Treasure hunters can look to Dr. Carl Hammer for encouragement. He apparently was a believer.

    His findings in How Did TJB Encode B2? are entirely consistent with John William Sherman as author. His conclusion that the codes are "real" seem to be based on proof of their non-randomness, a concept which probably never occured to Sherman.

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