We thought we were going to write more about the formatting of the semaphore codes used in an art-installation semaphore display in San Jose, but we discarded that idea when it became apparent that we would need to do some deeper study and that this information would be available on other websites for those who need to research it.

Suffice it to say that the inventor, copyist, popularizer of the specialized coding method referred to in a previous entry, Vigenere (or if your browser supports the French diacritical marks: Vigénère) used a coded table to hide the text. In the installation in San Jose, the code was transmitted through a set of four large disks with markings on the outside of a building. A search engine lookup for "San Jose Semaphore" will provide all the details  should you want to wander off on your own, instead of reading the previous entries. The installation used the illuminated disks to transmit the entire text of Pynchon's book The Crying of Lot 49 in a coded Vignere table that the artist, Ben Rubin painstakingly constructed.

The table concept that Vignere invented, (some say copied, others say less polite things), in any case the method used an arbitrarily selected word key that would be looked up on the table, and then each letter would have a different coded row as indicated the other day. The recipient would also need a copy of the table and the corresponding key.

We have lost interest in writing about the actual process of how it is mechanically done, unless we get comments from readers to explain further, since it seemed somewhat tedious, and found a very interesting quote in another source that Vigenere made about the nature of ciphers themselves:

All nature is merely a cipher and a secret writing.
A curious statement, but he was a Cabalist according to the author of the book we are selling, Codes and Cyphers by Agapeyeff. Of course, we are not privy to what Cabalists knew, but it is a not-so-puzzling combination of views.  So it is a curious juxtaposition of mystical thought, practical concealment, and some kind of lost traditions like the Gnostics or the hint of the Albigensians who had been eliminated earlier as a heretical movement. Nature as a cipher certainly has a Gnostic tone as a point of view.

We scanned a page from the book, which was printed originally in 1939, and it included the little marks that tramps would leave for each other in the days when roaming bands of the poor, destitute, ne'er do-wells, hobo's and those not interested in a steady job would criss-cross the nation. As one can see, life was no bed of roses, since the selection here tends to emphasize the warning signs of impending trouble for those who tried to eke out a living from the kindness of strangers. Since these are signs, rather than letters, they could be used as a universal set hieroglyphs, for literate and illiterate alike. But it was concealed, and only revealed to those who knew, and only when it fell into the hands of some curious officials did the code become public knowledge. It is similar to the contemporary use of chalked symbols on sidewalks to indicate the availability of wi-fi in urban areas.  "Nothing doing, disagreeable people" heads the list of hobo codes below, not the happiest of thoughts to start the day with for a wanderer. The book used to be on sale in our bookstore, but it sold in April of 2011.