USC, Swedish researchers crack Copiale Cipher

[October 26, 2011]  LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Scientists in California and Sweden have solved a 250-year-old mystery -- a coded manuscript written by a secret society.

The University of Southern California announced Tuesday that researchers had broken the Copiale Cipher -- the writing used in a 105-page 18th- century document from Germany.

Kevin Knight, of USC, and Beata Megyesi and Christiane Schaefer, of Uppsala University, did the work.

They used a computer program to decipher part of the manuscript, which was found in East Berlin after the Cold War and is now in a private collection.

The book, written in symbols and Roman letters, detailed rituals of a society that was fascinated by ophthalmology and eye surgery.

The team tried 80 languages before realizing the abstract symbols -- not the Roman letters -- held the message.

[Associated Press]

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