Francis Bacon's Cipher

Credit: Science Source/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Caption: Binary code cipher developed by the English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) in the 1605. It employed the letters A and B, equivalent to the 0 and 1 of modern codes, to represent the 24 letter alphabet of the time in five letter groups. Bacon's cipher or the Baconian cipher was created as a method of hiding one message within another. It is not a true cipher, but just a way to conceal secret text within plain sight. The way it originally worked is that the writer would use two different typefaces. One would be the A typeface and the other would be B. The message would be written with the two fonts intermingled, thus hiding the message within a perfectly normal text.

Release details: Model release not required. Property release not required.

Keywords: 1600s, 1605, 17th century, alphabet, bacon, bacon's cipher, baconian cipher, binary, black and white, cipher, cryptography, cypher, decryption, encoding, encryption, f code, francis bacon, historic, historical, history, letters, method, monochrome, no-one, nobody, plaintext, secret language system, sequence, series, steganography, text, white background, writing

Licence fees: A licence fee will be charged for any media (low or high resolution) used in your project.