BACON’S CIPHER.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXII, Issue 4321, 23 September 1921, Page 1

BACON’S CIPHER.

THE CLUE FOUND. There is a saying in the American Secret Service that no cipher can be invented to escape for Jong an intelligent pursuit after the key. The cipher of Roger Bacon, however, England’s famous thirteenth century monk, has passed through nearly 800 years of searchers’ hands and the clue is only now beginning to be detected. But, then, Bacon must himself have spent years upon his cipher for it is entan'gled into six ciphers within ciphers. Professor William R. Newbold, of the University of Pennsylvania, who has been spending two years tracing all manner of clues through the Bacon cipher, is still puzzled by,most of the text, says the Daily Express. The manuscript seems to be the unaccustomed eye to contain about 20,000 or 30,000 words. But each word is part of a shorthand system, and when the tangle is unravelled the total number of words will probably be nearly a million. ' '

The professor’s first clue was a sentence at the end of- a manuscript reading “ Michlton oladabas multos te teer- cere poras.” He believed this sentence of part Latin and part gibberish was placed by Bacon in the manuscript as a guide. Professor Newbold cut out the meaningless letters and got a Latin sentence reading “ Mihi dabas muTtos portas,” meaning “ Thou has given me many gates,,” This was an indication of the way to make the final disentanglement, after the symbols in the manuscript had been reduced to Latin. Then a chaos of words at the end of the manuscript finally yielded the signature “ R. Baconi ” by a process of separating combined letters. He therafter began an examination of alil old shorthand systems. He finally discovered a system that had been used by the ancient Greeks. This fitted perfectly into the Bacon symbols, and made it certain that Bacon had borrowed his shorthand from Greek sources. Then began the work of translation within translation, and the professor is still at it. He has been offered the services of three cipher experts employed by the American Government, but it seems they must first qualify in mediaeval Latin, cabalism, alchemy, astroltogy, and a few other subjects not usually of modern times. '