NOAA: ‘Cryptogram’ in a silk dress tells a weather story
December 15, 2023 —
Excerpt from the article: To keep wired messaging via telegraph inexpensive, a sort of shorthand was developed.
“Since telegraph companies charged by the number of words in a telegram, codes to compress a message to reduce the number of words became popular,” wrote researcher Wayne Chan from the University of Manitoba, when explaining the topic in an academic paper published in August of 2022.
For example, Chan notes, “A phrase such as “The crew are all drunk” may be substituted with a codeword such as “CRIMPING.”
It’s not all that different from what people do with texts on their cell phones today, Chan explains.