What do 18th-century letter-writers, early 20th-century business tycoons, and 21st-century teenagers glued to their smartphones have in common? The answer may surprise you.
While cataloging a portion of the vast Henry Ford Office records (some 1,600 cubic feet), I became very excited when I discovered what I thought was a secret code. I later learned (quite fortuitously from a colleague on Twitter) that these documents formed a part of something almost equally fascinating.
It turned out that what I had instead was a commercial telegraphic code. From the 19th through the mid-20th centuries, telegrams were integral to business and personal communications. Telegraph codes proliferated as a way to correspond economically and privately. Readily available code books such as the ABC Universal Commercial Electric Telegraph Code, not to mention many others, were published, with many businesses creating in-house codes. According to telegraphy historian-enthusiast John McVey, “Thousands of codes were published or issued privately, but they are largely forgotten now. They present a finely-grained window into their respective domains and their time. And they provide instances of sometimes stunning visual, technical, lexicographic and unwitting poetic achievement.”
“My” code was created by or for Ernest Liebold, who, as Henry Ford’s longtime personal and general secretary, managed Henry’s business, legal, and financial affairs. Liebold was responsible for keeping in close contact with representatives across the country, directing them on Ford business. We can’t tell whether he developed a customized code for Ford communications or modified an existing code. However, most of the telegrams I’ve run across so far are in plain English, so the code appears to have been seldom used. (Some of the telegrams are written tersely, in what we have come to think of as ‘telegraphic English,’ and others—particularly those signed by Ford himself—are quite lengthy and concern matters of strong personal importance to him, such as pacifism. But that is a story for another day.) Moreover, the code we have is incomplete—and not just because of missing pages. You can see here that Liebold or his office clerks never got around to finishing their telegraph code Rosetta Stone!
Unfinished code:
Ocmo-Octe, "Communications Code" (THF64061-THF64069)
Ocmo-Octe, "Communications Code" (THF64061-THF64069)
Ocme-Octe, “Communications Code” telegraph code used by Ford Motor Company, Subject and Name File, Box 7, Accession 62, Records Moved to Engineering Laboratory in 1919 series, Highland Park Office records subgroup, Henry Ford Office records, Benson Ford Research Center, The Henry Ford (THF64061-THF64069)
Abbreviations to save space have a long pedigree. Actor-blogger-technophile Stephen Fry makes the connection between 17th- and 18th-century abbreviations in letters, done to save time and precious space when paper was still a luxury item (a practice continuing into the 19th century—note the use of “yr,” “wd,” “shd,” and “&c,” throughout Thomas Carlyle’s letters) and today’s often-derided textspeak and netspeak. Moving forward to the present, a recent study indicates that said textspeak may not be hastening the demise of language and literacy quite as much as the doomsayers like to predict. Telegraphic codes fit quite nicely into this alphabetic panoply.
Here are some more samples of Liebold’s telegraph code and coded telegrams:
Code names for Henry and Clara Ford:
Bantibosi-Bantarosa, "Communications Code" (THF64061-THF64069)
Bantibosi-Bantarosa, “Communications Code” telegram code used by Ford Motor Company, Subject and Name File, Box 7, Accession 62, Records Moved to Engineering Laboratory in 1919 series, Highland Park Office records subgroup, Henry Ford Office records, Benson Ford Research Center, The Henry Ford (THF64061-THF64069)
Guidelines for encoding proper names:
Receiving Code, "Communications Code" (THF64061-THF64069)
…and numbers:
ACE, "Communications Code" (THF64061-THF64069)
(I haven’t been able to figure out quite how to use the preceding two charts yet.)
Some more coded vocabulary:
Afadam-Ajada, "Communications Code" (THF64061-THF64069)
Some more coded vocabulary (2):
Ajadab-Amadah, "Communications Code" (THF64061-THF64069)
Some more coded vocabulary (3):
Azadam-Acafat, "Communications Code" (THF64061-64069)
Azadam-Acafat, "Communications Code" (THF64061-64069)
Can you decipher some of this coded message?
Telegram from G. S. Anderson to E. G. Liebold, 2/26/1917 (THF64058)
Telegram from G. S. Anderson to E. G. Liebold, 2/26/1917, Telegrams, Box 40, Accession 2, Records Stored in 1919 series, Highland Park Office records subgroup, Henry Ford Office records, Benson Ford Research Center, The Henry Ford (THF64058)
Here’s one that the recipient translated for us:
Telegram from E. G. Liebold to G. S. Anderson, 2/27/1917 (THF64059)
Rebecca Bizonet is an archivist at the Benson Ford Research Center, The Henry Ford. In addition to processing and cataloging archival collections as part of the BFRC Processing Team, she provides reference assistance to visitors in the research center reading room and works with archivists at Ford Motor Company on research for the Ford Historical Resources Collaborative.
Thanks for posting this.
There would have been telegraphic codes for supply of automobiles and particularly parts. Their main purpose would have been economy : because telegrams and especially cablegrams (via submarine cable) were priced by the word, communications could be quite expensive.
Secrecy would have likely been at least as important in Liebold’s case, as communications from Ford’s office would have involved managemet, strategic, labor and other issues.
I am surprised there are not published telegraph codes within the Ford archives; even parts lists would have incorporated codes as a matter of course. Keep digging! I’ve seen codes incorporated in parts lists and catalogues for GM, International Harvester, etc.
The codewords shown here seem to me naive for so late a date (ca 1919). For one thing, they do not use the so-called two-letter difference rule, where every code word is at least two letters different from every other (thereby providing some protection from mutilation in transmission). Also, they’re of different lengths. But the codewords interest me less than the phrases, and their organization. I wonder if what you have here is a draft to a later code. Do these sheets come with an instruction in their use?
The “science” of selecting and arranging phrases is different from the science of selecting codes words, or making a “figure code.” Specialists were around for both jobs, although individual business people (men and some women too) were able to crank a code in short order, e.g., for a “present emergency.”
It’s my guess that the item you describe as “guidelines for encoding proper names” is a simple substitution code for encipherment of names that were not otherwise contained in the codebook. But I’m not sure that the first of the two examples you give under that head, actually does that. It may have more to do with encryption of names… I’m just not sure. So-called “s-p-e=l-l-i-n-g” was always a headache when it came to codes, going back to nautical signal codes as well. It was too laborious: you preferred to use code standing for names and phrases, so you didn’t have to spell things out.
Here’s an example of how the ACE “Is base of code and means figures” sheet would work:
TR + ACE = cars (I presume railroad)
GA = 30
thus, FACE FIU = 20 million dollars
I’d love to see more of this. The Ford Company’s cabling to operations overseas, let’s say, Japan, would without doubt have been coded, probably with the company’s proprietary code, perhaps in conjunction with something like Liebers or the ABC 5th or 6th edition.
The telegram of 27 February 1917 examples the common practice of penciling translation on the face (or back) of the telegram itself.
I might add that published codes tended to leave blank or “skeleton” sections, in which code words had no phrases printed next to them. These blank sections typically were at the back of the book, but might also be distributed here and there throughout its length. But I suspect you’re right in this case, that this code was abandoned.
Telegraphic codes persisted a long time – there is a lovely poem in the Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200505/bradfield
about the code used in the Australian Antarctic research expeditions as late as 1961, where transmissions were in Morse over terrible radio conditions. the first part reads
Compressed for Morse, compressed to better the odds
this first, flimsy signal might send sense across ocean
unbroken, I type just WYSSA, which you know means
all my love, darling in this telegraph of foreseen
longing.