Chiếc váy cổ chứa đựng bí mật: Thông điệp được mã hóa từ năm 1888

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Sara Rivers Cofield was on her usual search for interesting period clothing about a decade ago when she noticed what appeared to be a “textbook” silk bustle (khung lót áo) dress from the 1800s at an antique mall in Maine.

The bronze-colored dress was in good condition, with a draped (xếp nếp) skirt, puffy bustle (ngực phồng), and metal buttons that appeared to depict (mô tả) a Shakespearean motif. Ms. Rivers Cofield, an archaeologist, bought it for $100. Little did she know that the garment (áo) also contained a mystery: A secret pocket with a cryptic (khó hiểu) note.

Part of the message, written on two, scrunched-up translucent (trong mờ) sheets of paper, read: “Bismark Omit leafage buck bank / Paul Ramify loamy event false new event.”

Ms. Rivers Cofield was baffled (bối rối). Was it a writing exercise? A list? A code? “What the…?,” she wrote on her blog in 2014. “I’m putting it up here in case there’s some decoding (giải mã) prodigy (thần đồng) out there looking for a project.”

Wayne Chan, a data analyst at the University of Manitoba, finally cracked the case. The note, he wrote in a recent study, contained codes used to telegraph (điện báo) condensed (cô đặc, cô đọng) weather observations (quan sát) for stations in the United States and Canada in 1888. Each message started with a station location, followed by code words for temperature and pressure, dew (sương) point, precipitation (lượng mưa) and wind direction, cloud observations, wind velocity (vận tốc) and sunset observations, Mr. Chan wrote.

source: nytimes,