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    USC, Swedish researchers crack Copiale Cipher

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Scientists in California and Sweden have solved a 250-year-old mystery — a coded manuscript written by a secret society.

    The University of Southern California announced Tuesday that researchers had broken the Copiale Cipher — the writing used in a 105-page 18th century document from Germany.

    Kevin Knight, of USC, and Beata Megyesi and Christiane Schaefer, of Uppsala University, did the work.

    They used a statistical computer program to decipher part of the manuscript, which was found in East Berlin after the Cold War and is now in a private collection.

    The book, written in symbols and Roman letters, details complicated initiation ceremonies of a society fascinated by ophthalmology. They include making mystical signs and plucking a hair from a candidate's eyebrow. The convoluted text swears candidates to loyalty and secrecy.

     

    29 comments

    • Broke in Michigan  •  7 mths ago
      So...what did it say?
      • HARRY 7 mths ago
        Surrender earthlings ! Your weapons are useless against us !
    • DocJ  •  Richland, United States  •  7 mths ago
      Boy, I thought doing the daily cryptoquote in the paper was tough sometimes. I'd like to see what it looked like and what the translation said. Too bad the story was lacking in detail.

      But why do morons have to take a story that has nothing to do with politics and then reply with dunb *** cracks about republicans, democrats, etc? We could probably weed out 1/2 the comments if people kept it to the point of the story.
      • gabeygoat 7 mths ago
        haha, so true
      • JJMurray 7 mths ago
        They're part of their own secret society. They are compelled by their initiation rites to make political comments on any story no matter what the subject. They're a REALLY scary cult if you ask me.
    • John  •  San Diego, United States  •  7 mths ago
      Mr. Chambers...Mr. Chambers, the first page is just a collection of English words with their own translation. But the rest of the book...the rest of the book—It's a cookbook!
      • grayman 7 mths ago
        To serve Man!
      • Rays fan 95 7 mths ago
        I guess Im not the only one who watches the twilight zone marathon on New Years Eve! "To Serve Man" is my favorite along with "Caesar and Me".
    • Realism  •  7 mths ago
      Google or Bing Copiale Cipher for more complete/informative articles.
      • J.R. 7 mths ago
        Sad, isn't it?!
    • gabeygoat  •  Corvallis, United States  •  7 mths ago
      I love reading about cipher work. Is there somewhere that we can read the deciphered text?
    • h2ok9  •  7 mths ago
      Occupy Wall Street is not just about that the wealth should be distributed differently or anything like that!... Go ahead and keep what you got!... but just be aware... this is not about wealth... it is about our enslavement to the corporate world and their control over us both in the financial and energy world..

      What one of the answers to our problrms is, is to use the technologies that Tesla gave us that the corporate world is & has been all along, suppressing from public view. Everyone can have control over their own energy use and not have to pay anyone else for what they use... That's what this is all about, only they, the corporate world, don't want anyone knowing this... they have been suppressing this technology since before the first World war on, and we have what we are now experiencing because of it.

      So, this is winnable because we the people are developing these technologies in our homes and garages, they know this, and are fighting us over this too, so go Wall Street Occupiers go, and God bless you in your collective efforts to do good in the name of "We the People!"
    • Austin  •  Albuquerque, United States  •  7 mths ago
      What did they crack?
      What did it say?
      Who wrote this and why?
    • Thermalicefish  •  7 mths ago
      So they missed the main thing everyone want to know .. what was the book about ... what did it say... Dumb story.
    • J.R.  •  7 mths ago
      @Realism said, "Google or Bing Copiale Cipher for more complete/informative articles." ---- Pretty bad when these writers leave you with the need to search for more information on the story... just so you know it IS a news story and what it means.
      • Realism 7 mths ago
        I would have thought that is just the kind on pap that AP would be all over. I had never heard of Copiale before and it is pretty interesting.
    • Greg  •  7 mths ago
      why do they bother to write such shallow and superficial articles?
    • john  •  7 mths ago
      its the secret to wealth and power hence why it was not published here
      it concluded with screw your fellow man to each their own signed the 1%ers
    • Schink  •  7 mths ago
      So .... Did it say anything useful?
    • Schink  •  7 mths ago
      So..... Did it say anything usefull?
    • Thomas  •  Lake Forest, United States  •  7 mths ago
      How do I opt NOT tp have my location as part of the message?
    • Michael  •  7 mths ago
      So what?
    • TughralA  •  Chesterfield, United States  •  7 mths ago
      one down thousand more to go! lol
    • Dave  •  7 mths ago
      And it said: The first step to world domination invade Poland
    • Zoila  •  7 mths ago
      This is an incomplete story, they just want to distract us from the important news going on here at home and around the world. But this story gives us a chance to talk about politics:

      Shortly after Obama's call to arms, "take off your slippers and put on your marching boots - we have work to do" speech, the mobs started marching on Wall Street. They want to get rid of capitalism? (I thought we were socialists already)?. When you get rid of a system, you have to replace it with another - maybe what they want is Marxism?
    • SouthSiderz  •  7 mths ago
      It said
      NO SOUP FOR YOU !
    • Stark4090  •  7 mths ago
      Most secret societies are formed for the protection of its members. For instance freemasonry is used to aid members in times of crisis such as war, when secret signs and passwords are uttered to keep from getting killed. Joseph Smith the mormon prophet uttered the words of the masonic plea to spare ones life at the time of his jail escape and it was ignored for he had revealed masonic secret rituals to his flock in the mormon temple in Nauvoo, Illinois in 1846. Smith had already turned coat so his utterance of the plea was of no avail. Can't speak out of both sides of you mouth.
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