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October 7, 2016

Feel Like Decoding Civil War Telegrams?

The Huntington Library is offering the general populace the opportunity to help de-code and transcribe thousands of Civil War telegrams.

From the website RealClearLife.com: "A California library wants your help in sifting through, transcribing, and decoding thousands of Civil War–era documents. The Huntington Library has launched a crowdsourcing project to attempt to crack 15,971 Civil War–era telegrams—including 100 to and from President Abraham Lincoln himself. The telegrams zigzagged between the president, his Cabinet, and officers of the Union Army. Approximately one-third were written in unbreakable code, one so complex that the Confederate Army was never able to crack it."

Read the full story at Library Wants Your Help Decoding Thousands of Civil War Telegrams

2 comments:

Dana Leeds said...

Neat! I'm going to check this out...

Margaret Rutledge said...

Thanks for posting this. I have transcribed several pages now and it is very interesting. Different from transcribing documents for genealogy. The code book pages I've done show the code would have been very difficult to break because they used word substitution codes. It looks like every very unit had a unique code.