Project Description
Overview
Elizebeth Smith Friedman was known as America’s first female cryptanalyst. Her long and distinguished career was highlighted as a code breaker in both World Wars and was a key resource for the Coast Guard during prohibition.
Long before computers, an English philosopher by the name of Francis Bacon created a system of encoding the alphabet using the letters a and b in five-letter patterns. An A would be represented by aaaaa, a B by aaaab, C is aaaba, etc. This was essentially an early binary system to represent letters.
Using Bacon’s system, students will encode one of Elizebeth Smith Friedman’s hidden messages from her 1918 class photos as they learn about Mrs. Friedman’s life and her work in cryptology.
