Notes about Commercial Codes

The use of a code to transmit messages was primarily driven by making the message shorter, due to the expense of sending a telegram. Especially if you were sending messages across the Atlantic, each word in a telegram could cost the equivalent of several dollars per word.

From the late 1800's into the mid 1900's, there were a large variety of codes available. Some were general-purpose codes like this one, others were focused on certain industries. There were also the military and diplomatic codes that common in that period as well.

As you look at this code, remember you are dealing with a document from 1880. Due to the nature of this code, there are some (not many) places in the main code that would be controversial today. The main exception is that the list of products and commodities lists a number of items such as lion skins or tobacco whose sale we discourage or forbid today. The age and origin also shows up in a few other places, for example the spelling "to-day" is used consistently.

Another thing to remember is that there are a number of terms such as "demurrage" or "general average" that have a technical meaning in the area of commerce or insurance. You can look up definitions for those terms on the Internet.

Why did codes disappear? Here are some of my ideas:

Using these Pages

When you are in the process of encoding a message, the top part of the page will look something like the following: (Note: In this example, only the navigation buttons are active, and the message is fixed).

Message:  ENRIQUE STREAMLET SOLSTICE TURTLE WORTHILY  Enrique 13751 Streamlet Is stranded, but do not expect any damage 13325 Solstice Got on shore through fault of pilot 14643 Turtle Tug(s) now assisting 15419 Worthily I (we) write you full particulars WRE—YES CodeNo Code Word Wreck—continued 15401 Workable Customs authorities have sold the wreck 15402 Workbox Customs authorities have sold all goods salved 15403 Worker Consul has engaged men to salve wreck 15404 Workfold Wrecked. 15405 Workhouse Is wrecked at — (Rest of page omitted)

The parts of the page have the following meanings:

• Message: ENRIQUE STREAMLET SOLSTICE ...— This represents the telegram as it would be sent. Since Morse code doesn't distinguish uppercase and lowercase letters, the message is displayed in uppercase.
• Next comes the various code words (along with the code numbers and phrases) that make up the message. The "Delete" button can be used to remove each part of the message.
• The "Add Uncoded Text" button and textbox are used to include names and phrases that are not in the code. How to use this button is better seen in the examples of encoding and decoding messages. The the first entry in the sample message, "Enrique", was added using by typing "Enrique" in the text box and pressing this button.
• Next come a set of buttons for navigating around the various pages. These buttons appear at the top and bottom of each page.
  • Introduction—Takes you to this introductory page
  • Table of Contents—Take you to the table of contents page, which can help you determine what page may contain the table you want
  • Vocabulary Index—This is a list of the keywords used to organize the phrases. So if you are looking for phrases corresponding to "Cargo", you can use the vocabulary index to know that you should start on page 50.
  • Previous Page—Take you to the previous page (308 in this example).
  • Next is a textbox to display the current page number. To go to an arbitrary page, you can enter the page number here and press the "Go" button.
  • Next Page—Take you to the next page (310 in this example).
• Then is the contents of the current page. The "Add" button to the left of each phrase will add the corresponding phrase to the end of the message. If the current page has two columns, There is an "Add" button for each column.

Encoding a Message

The book includes an example of encoding messages on page vii. Here is my own example of encoding and decoding messages.

Suppose we want to send a message: "The goods ordered on August 10th have not arrived, tell me why."

we can start by looking for phrases related to orders or goods, and there are two phrases that are applicable to this situation:

Page	CodeNo	Code Word	Phrase
198	9851	Outpouring	Order(s) not yet to hand
133	6611	Gloominess	Goods not yet to hand

If we think about synonyms and other words that might be helpful, we can find two more possibilities under the term shipment.

Page	CodeNo	Code Word	Phrase
265	13243	Sniveller	What has become of the shipment per
266	13280	Socratique	The shipment(s) of —

It may seem that coming up with the possible alternatives may be difficult, especially since there is no search button, but remember that if you are frequently sending and receiving coded messages, you would quickly learn where to find things, especially those phrases that apply to your area of business (Think of how easy it is to remember the various abbreviations we use in text messages or chat rooms).

Finishing the message (in less detail), we can use the phrases

Page	CodeNo	Code Word	Phrase
28	1390	Assume	10th day of August
115	5704	Expert	Should like to have explanation

So assembling the message as "What has become of the shipment of August 10th, the goods are not at hand, I would like to have an explanation." we could encode it as:
 SNIVELLER ASSUME GLOOMINESS EXPERT 

A few notes:

• If there are proper names or other words that don't correspond to anything in the code book, they are typically inserted as plain text in the appropriate part of the telegram. The "Add Uncoded Text" textbox and button are available for adding these words to your message. If certain names or phrases occur frequently in your messages, a user would typically add them to the book at designed places in the Addenda, along with the people receiving the messages. Some sample additions are given in on pages 313 and 451.
• Remember that in Morse code there are not separate uppercase and lowercase letters.
• We have taken a message of 16 words with four words, for a considerable savings.
  • Yes, the count of 16 words in the original message is correct—Under the telegraph regulations of the time, "th", each digit, and each punctuation mark would count as a separate word. So "10th" is considered three words: "1", "0", and "th". Of course, if it was written out as "tenth", that would qualify as one word.
• You may have been expecting five-letter code words like 'TEHOX'. At the time this code was created, code words were required to resemble genuine words. Later on, the regulations were changed to permit the five-letter code words we are more familiar with, and the 6th and 7th editions of the ABC code use them.

If we (for some reason) wanted to send code numbers rather than code words, the message would become (adding leading 0's so all numbers are five digits):
 13243 01390 06611 05704 

Enciphered Code

The method I will describe is the one referenced in this code, as part of the example on page vii. Here each digit in the code number is replaced with a letter, and the resulting message is sent. If we use the example from the book, and use the replacement table:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0
C	U	M	B	E	R	L	A	N	D

Then we would encipher the code number 13243 by replacing the digit '1' with the letter 'C', the digit '3' with the letter 'M', the digit '2' by the letter 'U', the digit '4' with the letter 'B', and the final digit '3' by 'M' again. Continuing this for the rest of the message, we get:

1	3	2	4	3		0	1	3	9	0		0	6	6	1	1		0	5	7	0	4
C	M	U	B	M		D	C	M	N	D		D	R	R	C	C		D	E	L	D	B

I will note here that care should be taken that any unencoded words cannot be misunderstood as code words, especially if transmission errors are taken into account.

This is only one example of converting code numbers before transmission. The main question is how secure do you want the message to be, and how much complexity are you willing to accept? Despite the claims of the author, I doubt that this particular approach would remain secret against a determined attack, although few nongovernmental entities would have had the ability to mount such an attack.

Decoding a Message

Suppose we receive the message:
 GENTLENESS RABAISSER BATTLE CREEK ARABISM THOMPSON TOLLBOOTH TREACLE 

Take each of the code words, and look it up in the code book. The code words are in sorted order for the vocabulary section, and then separate areas for the addenda and various tables in Part II of the book. Looking each word up, we find:

Page	CodeNo	Code Word	Phrase
133	6530	Gentleness	Can you go
226	11297	Rabaisser	Railway station
		Battle Creek	(Proper name, not a valid code word)
25	1218	Arabism	Await arrival of —
		Thompson	(Proper name, not a valid code word)
288	14374	Tollbooth	Three o'clock, P.M.
290	14496	Treacle	Train

So this message is asking to go to the train station at Battle Creek, and meet Thompson, who should be arriving on the 3:00 train.

If we get a message using numbers, the process is again similar to handling code words, but actually a little easier since the code numbers are in strict order throughout the book.

Receiving an enciphered code message (Using the same message and replacement example 'CUMBERLAND') the message would have been:

D	R	E	M	D		C	C	U	N	L		BATTLE CREEK		D	C	U	C	A		THOMPSON		C	B	M	L	B		C	B	B	N	R
0	6	5	3	0		1	1	2	9	7		BATTLE CREEK		0	1	2	1	8		THOMPSON		1	4	3	7	4		1	4	4	9	6

So just convert the letters back to numbers using the specified table, then look up each of the numbers in the code book.