Huh. You learn something new every day. I have a cipher wheel, or Jefferson disk, or Bazeries cylinder. I have always called it a Jefferson wheel, occasionally a Jefferson disk, but never a Bazeries cylinder, and rarely do I refer to it as a cipher wheel. I had no idea it went by these other monikers.
With all these names, what is a cipher wheel? Similar to the cipher system invented by (the guy in my first blog) a cipher wheel has rotating disks, but in this case, they are all the same size and are on a central cylinder. The English alphabet, and I do want to be specific here, become semantics matter, are along the outside of each wheel. Jefferson ciphers have at least 12 wheels, with the English alphabet on the outside, but many also may have additional signs, symbols or Greek letters added.
The more I read about the Jefferson wheel, by any other name, the more impressed I am with both Jefferson for inventing it, without knowing much about cryptology, and how it works a couple of different ways. I have always used it where I order the letters across a line horizontally, then the code given is five or six lines away and looks like gibberish. Another way is to number the plates, or disks, and then slide them on to the brass cylinder in the middle, then give a clue. Jefferson’s original wheel had 36 disks, so the odds of getting the random letters in the particular order without more information was pretty small.
In 1795, Jefferson invented this, but due to lack of Internet and Black Friday sales, it languished. Bazeries reinvented it in about 100 years later, and this time, a war was just around the corner and it took off in popularity.
While this wheel and disk is a good way to write a message, it makes no claim to be uncrackable. Probably best used for coded messages between friends.
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