HEART OF STONE
Interview of Charles W. Stone by Iona Miller, Fall 2010
Riverbanks Labs - Architectural Acoustics, Reverb Chamber, Tuning Forks, Resonance, Genetics, NSA Decryption, Levitation & Time Travel -
How a Seemingly Failed Levitation Machine Led to the Founding of NSA;
First Thinktank * First Privately Owned Research Laboratory * First US Decryptions
Original US Esoterics Lab & Thinktank
"Some rich men go in for art collections, gay times on the Riviera, or extravagant living. But they all get satiated. That’s why I stick to scientific experiments, spending money to discover valuable things that universities can’t afford. You never get sick of too much knowledge." --George Fabyan
"Less Noise; More Hearing": Geneva, Illinois. Riverbank Engineering Bldg. Reminiscent of Tibetan architecture, The Villa, 40 miles west of Chicago, is now a museum that houses some of what Fabyan collected. The Villa was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1907 (the Villa now serves as a museum full of photographs and memorabilia). In 1914, landscape architect Taro Otsuka designed Fabyan’s Japanese Garden. The garden was restored in 1971 and again in 1994, and is open to the public.
Many different research activities occurred at Riverbank, including decoding and deciphering enemy messages during World War I, deciphering alleged secret messages in the works of William Shakespeare, research in the field of architectural acoustics, groundbreaking research in the field of cryptology, fieldwork in the use of hand grenades and military trenches, research and development of tuning forks, and studies of human fitness and anatomy. The list is varied and fascinating. Teams of researchers lived and worked at Riverbank, devoting years of their lives to the furthering of science. Many scientists from around the nation and world have visited Riverbank and stayed at The Lodge. The United State’s military successes in World War I and World War II have a direct relevance to Riverbank. And Riverbank can be considered to be a direct lineal predecessor of the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency.
As Friedman and his staff in the Riverbank Department of Codes and Ciphers worked on solving messages coming in from various federal agencies and foreign governments, they became the first unofficial cryptologic organization in the United States. It was still many months before Military Intelligence was formed as the nation’s first official cipher bureau. Friedman invented the words "cryptanalysis" and "cryptology", the first being code-breaking, and the latter being the overall term used to describe the science. In 1929, he became widely known as one of the world’s leading authorities on cryptology when the Encyclopedia Britannica published his article on "Codes and Ciphers." The Black Chamber was dissolved in 1929 and the Signal Intelligence Service was created with William Friedman as its first director. His first task was to set up an adequate program to provide training for officers in cryptology. The result was the Signal Intelligence School. He also wrote three textbooks on military cryptography for these courses. These comprise the finest, most lucid exposition of the solution of basic ciphers that has ever been published. The Black Chamber, otherwise known as MI-8 or Cipher Bureau, was the United States' first peacetime cryptanalytic organization, and a forerunner of the National Security Agency. The only prior codes and cypher organizations maintained by the US government had been some intermittent, and always abandoned, attempts by Armed Forces branches prior to World War I.
The American Black Chamber By Herbert Osborn Yardley
http://books.google.com/books?id=Y2GI32l-hXIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22The+Black+chamber%22&source=bll&ots=xg4UEBzEhn&sig=D4sT-ij1zkXbSmytjinLpUietnY&hl=en&ei=Kbe4TKPWPJDksQPH74D7Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=11&ved=0CEQQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q&f=false
Eventually, Fabyan’s estate grew to cover 600 acres and was the home to award-winning livestock and other animals. Fabyan imported scientists from the fields of plant genetics and acoustics as well as cryptography to his estate. The cryptographers were mainly there to prove that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays, but still ended up being the foundation for the NSA.Fabyan read in one of Bacon's works a description of a levitation device that allegedly worked on acoustic principles. He built one, but couldn't get it to fly, so he sent to Harvard University for some acoustic experts to help him. One discovery revealed by the code, previously known only to the Rosicrucians, is an acoustical levitating machine. A huge drum with piano strings stretched along its surface is rotated within an outer casing with corresponding strings. As the strings vibrate, the outer shell is made to levitate. It had been known for some time that Francis Bacon belonged to a secret society called the Rosicrucian Society. They believed in conducting scientific experiments that in those times was often considered witchcraft. Due to Bacon’s position with the Queen of England, he ran the Queen’s printing press, and had devised what was called a biliteral cipher utilizing wide and thin letters to represent the alphabet.
Colonel Fabyan also believed in the Baconian theory. Mrs. Gallup believed Bacon was the real Shakespeare for two reasons: 1) Bacon had invented the biliteral cipher and used it in printed publications, and 2) the original printed folios of Shakespeare’s plays used a variety of different typefaces.
So goes the theory; trouble is, it doesn't work. Fabyan invited a famous professor to his estate to study the problem. The professor made a few calculations, and convinced Fabyan there would never be enough sound energy to lift anything. Might the old gentleman be interested in underwriting some genuine scientific research, such as a reverberation chamber?
So began decades of discovery: Sabine's formula for sound absorption is still used in many standard acoustical tests, and the unit of absorption now bears his name, "sabin." The wonders recorded included sound absorbers that seemed to absorb more sound than fell upon them; an acoustical consultant, never hired for a certain concert hall project, who was criticized for its poor acoustics (while another acoustical consultant was praised for the excellent acoustics of the very same hall); the standard color of sound used in an acoustical laboratory; the required height, weight and shoes for a lady floor-walker; and much, much more, equally exotic.
The Colonel died May 17, 1936; his wife died two years later, and the executors of her will sold Riverbank to the Kane County Forest Preserve for $70,500. Various guests to the estate supposedly included Albert Einstein, P.T. Barnum and Wallace Clement Sabine (American physicist and pioneer founder of the field of architectural acoustics). The work in cryptology done there by William Friedman, work in acoustical research done by Wallace Clement and Paul (a distant cousin) Sabine, and Fabyan�s strange desire to prove that the works of Shakespeare were in fact not written by Shakespeare but contained Baconian ciphers. Elizabeth Wells Gallup studied Shakepeare’s First Folio to see if the differences in variations of type represented Bacon’s use of the biliteral cipher. One of the messages she deciphered was: "Queen Elizabeth is my true mother, and I am the lawful heir to the throne. Find the Cypher storie my books contain; it tells great secrets, every one of which, if imparted openly, would forfeit my life. F. Bacon" They also worked unsuccessfully on the inscrutable Voynich Manuscript.
One of the scientific experiments documented by Sir Francis Bacon was a levitating machine. The machine was a wooden tube with metal strings attached to it, around which fit another wooden tube with metal strings attached to the inside of it. The center tube was supposed to spin and by sympathetic vibration cause the strings on the outer tube to vibrate. The resonance from the striking would create a force field, which would levitate the outer tube off of the ground. Colonel Fabyan hired Bert Eisenhour, an engineer from Chicago, to construct this machine at Riverbank. Though the machine was constructed, it did not work. Eisenhour was convinced that the strings were not tuned properly, and suggested they consult someone knowledgeable in acoustics. Decipherment from Shakespeare's first folio produced the plans for the Baconian Acoustical Levitation Device, which Fabyan and his army managed to build. It was: A wooden tube with metal strings attached to it, around which fit another wooden tube with metal strings attached to the inside of it. The center tube was supposed to spin and by sympathetic vibration cause the strings on the outer tube to vibrate. The resonance from the striking would create a force field, which would levitate the outer tube off of the ground.
STONE: I did find evidence and a wood model of a device at the Geneva Museum of a "Baconian levitation device." It reportedly was workable, in principle. It is only a few steps to time travel. The Time travel which was developed by DARPA and the CIA after WW II was based on specialized music at The Vatican. (Also a form of acoustics) Chronovision came from the Vatican based music and Enrico Fermi. It is possible that time travel was also invented earlier at Riverbank Labs as there is a similarity to acousics and music. It does appear that levitation was also developed there. There is a relationship between standing waves and musical instruments. Resonance is a fundamental principle from micro to macrocosm as are harmonics. Musical tones are produced by musical instruments, or by the voice, which, from a physics perspective, is a very complex wind instrument. So the physics of music is the physics of the kinds of sounds these instruments can make. What kinds of sounds are these? They are tones caused by standing waves produced in or on the instrument. So the properties of these standing waves, which are always produced in very specific groups, or series, have far-reaching effects on music theory.
Most sound waves, including the musical sounds that actually reach our ears, are not standing waves. Normally, when something makes a wave, the wave travels outward, gradually spreading out and losing strength, like the waves moving away from a pebble dropped into a pond. But when the wave encounters something, it can bounce (reflection) or be bent (refraction). In fact, you can "trap" waves by making them bounce back and forth between two or more surfaces. Musical instruments take advantage of this; they produce pitches by trapping sound waves. Why are trapped waves useful for music? Any bunch of sound waves will produce some sort of noise. But to be a tone - a sound with a particular pitch - a group of sound waves has to be very regular, all exactly the same distance apart. That's why we can talk about the frequency and wavelength of tones.
Figure 1: A noise is a jumble of sound waves. A tone is a very regular set of waves, all the same size and same distance apart.Figure 1 (NoisevsTone.png)
So how can you produce a tone? Let's say you have a sound wave trap (for now, don't worry about what it looks like), and you keep sending more sound waves into it. Picture a lot of pebbles being dropped into a very small pool. As the waves start reflecting off the edges of the pond, they interfere with the new waves, making a jumble of waves that partly cancel each other out and mostly just roils the pond - noise.
But what if you could arrange the waves so that reflecting waves, instead of cancelling out the new waves, would reinforce them? The high parts of the reflected waves would meet the high parts of the oncoming waves and make them even higher. The low parts of the reflected waves would meet the low parts of the oncoming waves and make them even lower. Instead of a roiled mess of waves cancelling each other out, you would have a pond of perfectly ordered waves, with high points and low points appearing regularly at the same spots again and again. To help you imagine this, here are animations of a single wave reflecting back and forth and standing waves.
This sort of orderliness is actually hard to get from water waves, but relatively easy to get in sound waves, so that several completely different types of sound wave "containers" have been developed into musical instruments. The two most common - strings and hollow tubes - will be discussed below, but first let's finish discussing what makes a good standing wave container, and how this affects music theory.
In order to get the necessary constant reinforcement, the container has to be the perfect size (length) for a certain wavelength, so that waves bouncing back or being produced at each end reinforce each other, instead of interfering with each other and cancelling each other out. And it really helps to keep the container very narrow, so that you don't have to worry about waves bouncing off the sides and complicating things. So you have a bunch of regularly-spaced waves that are trapped, bouncing back and forth in a container that fits their wavelength perfectly. If you could watch these waves, it would not even look as if they are traveling back and forth. Instead, waves would seem to be appearing and disappearing regularly at exactly the same spots, so these trapped waves are called standing waves.
Enrico Fermi was involved in the development. Riverbank was for many years the leading acoustics testing facility in the world. So that fits in with the time travel story. Riverbank is operated or maintained now by a medium sized high tech company in Tyson's Corner. The CEO was formerly the President of Illinois Institute of Technology which is closely linked to Riverbank. I know most of the senior Execs of the company of which a number are retired Navy and Army officers. The CEO even calls his own home Villa.
Iona Miller reports from a 2008 contact with Black Swan "Julian West": "This is utmost importance to one of my own obsessive investigations. My paternal grandfather worked at the legendary Riverbank Labs for the infamous Col George Fabyan. One of the many controversial/occult studies undertaken at Riverbank was the attempt to prove that Shakespeare was Bacon. (Elizebeth Friedman, for example, was one of Fabyan's most important colleagues. It is through her work that a connection can be established between Fabyan and Atlantis-scholar Ignatius Donnelly.) Also conducted at Riverbank: Experiments in teleportation and time-travel via the use of acoustics. My grandfather had a very old set of Shakespeare's complete works (heavily annotated in more than one handwriting), which is now unfortunately lost, due to the ignorance and carelessness of his widow. (He never discussed the true nature of his work with his family; I myself have spent free time over several years just beginning to gather some real facts together (--discovering your work, linking Bacon to Germain, may be a big breakthrough in this research into the true nature and import of the experimental research conducted at Riverbank)). I also have in my own possession a few artifacts from Fabyan's estate, which came down from my grandfather."
She began investigating Riverbank Labs in 2006 with another high IQ MRU alumni with intelligence connections, (a former military intel internal security officer) responding to questions about the NSA cryptographer in Dan Brown's proposal on "Solomon's Key" which appeared later as the book "Lost Symbol." The father of his childhood friend "disposed of the incriminating walkin vaults in old NSA HQ at Riverbank Labs....the first overt attempt to voluntarily recruit me was Jan 4, 1967 at that same RIVERBANKLABS!" "I wasn't excited about the spiel Carl apparently agreed to. I had been warned two years previously by Dale Williams, son of Riverbank director, and also in 6th grade by Mrs. Jones former OSS cipherhead. I took those warnings lightly till personnel got used up due to Viet Nam and TEXACO linked side of NSA started using heavier tactics like extortion, threats and financial incentives. The author, William Shirer and son in law of Joe McCarthy (William Tierney) were both close friends of Friedman but never disclosed that, as far as i know. Shirer almost killed himself because he thought nobody would read Rise and Fall of Third Reich; he was also an associate of NSA/Norris at Tribune. I am pleased to contest any difference between what i say and NSA official version , with perfect confidence. They probably they won't even try. You might see that i fill in the large blank spots in official history." "Don't ever think that NSA began in 1952. I've seen their charter and it isn't the public one. Until 1970, NSA considered themselves the real OSS and they were run until 1990 by about 10 military men most of whom were among the few who managed to fight back effectively on Dec 7, 1941. They considered NSA Directors and US Presidents to be hired help and figureheads. BTW, Elizebeth Smith Friedman was a cousin of Dan Quayle's wife."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94KzmB2bI7s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpvbqdXJ1lM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veM5nZNBoW8&feature=related
Acoustic Levitation: While the Levitation Machine may have never been operational, the groundwork for the principles of acoustic levitation were laid at Riverbank Labs. Acoustic levitation is a method for suspending matter in a medium by using acoustic radiation pressure from intense sound waves in the medium. Acoustic levitation is possible because of the non-linear effects of intense sound waves. The idea that something so intangible can lift objects can seem unbelievable, but it's a real phenomenon. Acoustic levitation takes advantage of the properties of sound to cause solids, liquids and heavy gases to float. The process can take place in normal or reduced gravity. In other words, sound can levitate objects on Earth or in gas-filled enclosures in space. Scientists have developed a sound generator so powerful its shock waves can stun, and even kill people. Another group of researchers have developed another unusual application for sound: a method of "acoustic levitation" that could help maintain colonies on Mars or the moon by using high-pitched sound waves to remove alien dust.
Wired explains,Blasting a high-pitched noise from a tweeter into a pipe that focuses the sound waves can create enough pressure to lift troublesome alien dust off surfaces, according to a study published January in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Extra-terrestrial missions have been plagued by dust and debris, which cling to rovers and astronauts because lunar and Martian environments lack the Earth's water or atmosphere that can displace the particles.
According to Wired, Electrostatic charging from solar winds and UV radiation on the Moon makes this sharp dust cling to everything, including astronaut suits where it can work its way through the glove air locks. It also sticks to the solar panels that power rovers and other instruments.
See acoustic levitation for yourself in the video below! Using only sound waves, the scientists are able to lift mock "Martian and lunar dust" off of a solar panel. Cool!
WATCH: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/20/acoustic-levitation-stere_n_429558.html
To understand how acoustic levitation works, you first need to know a little about gravity, air and sound. First, gravity is a force that causes objects to attract one another. The simplest way to understand gravity is through Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation. This law states that every particle in the universe attracts every other particle. The more massive an object is, the more strongly it attracts other objects. The closer objects are, the more strongly they attract each other. An enormous object, like the Earth, easily attracts objects that are close to it, like apples hanging from trees. Scientists haven't decided exactly what causes this attraction, but they believe it exists everywhere in the universe.
Second, air is a fluid that behaves essentially the same way liquids do. Like liquids, air is made of microscopic particles that move in relation to one another. Air also moves like water does -- in fact, some aerodynamic tests take place underwater instead of in the air. The particles in gasses, like the ones that make up air, are simply farther apart and move faster than the particles in liquids.
Third, sound is a vibration that travels through a medium, like a gas, a liquid or a solid object. A sound's source is an object that moves or changes shape very rapidly. For example, if you strike a bell, the bell vibrates in the air. As one side of the bell moves out, it pushes the air molecules next to it, increasing the pressure in that region of the air. This area of higher pressure is a compression. As the side of the bell moves back in, it pulls the molecules apart, creating a lower-pressure region called a rarefaction. The bell then repeats the process, creating a repeating series of compressions and rarefactions. Each repetition is one wavelength of the sound wave.
The sound wave travels as the moving molecules push and pull the molecules around them. Each molecule moves the one next to it in turn. Without this movement of molecules, the sound could not travel, which is why there is no sound in a vacuum.Acoustic levitation uses sound traveling through a fluid -- usually a gas -- to balance the force of gravity. On Earth, this can cause objects and materials to hover unsupported in the air. In space, it can hold objects steady so they don't move or drift. The process relies on of the properties of sound waves, especially intense sound waves.
The Physics of Sound Levitation A basic acoustic levitator has two main parts -- a transducer, which is a vibrating surface that makes sound, and a reflector. Often, the transducer and reflector have concave surfaces to help focus the sound. A sound wave travels away from the transducer and bounces off the reflector. Three basic properties of this traveling, reflecting wave help it to suspend objects in midair. First, the wave, like all sound, is a longitudinal pressure wave. In a longitudinal wave, movement of the points in the wave is parallel to the direction the wave travels. It's the kind of motion you'd see if you pushed and pulled one end of a stretched Slinky. Most illustrations, though, depict sound as a transverse wave, which is what you would see if you rapidly moved one end of the Slinky up and down. This is simply because transverse waves are easier to visualize than longitudinal waves.
Second, the wave can bounce off of surfaces. It follows the law of reflection, which states that the angle of incidence -- the angle at which something strikes a surface -- equals the angle of reflection -- the angle at which it leaves the surface. In other words, a sound wave bounces off a surface at the same angle at which it hits the surface. A sound wave that hits a surface head-on at a 90 degree angle will reflect straight back off at the same angle. The easiest way to understand wave reflection is to imagine a Slinky that is attached to a surface at one end. If you picked up the free end of the Slinky and moved it rapidly up and then down, a wave would travel the length of the spring. Once it reached the fixed end of the spring, it would reflect off of the surface and travel back toward you. The same thing happens if you push and pull one end of the spring, creating a longitudinal wave.
Finally, when a sound wave reflects off of a surface, the interaction between its compressions and rarefactions causes interference. Compressions that meet other compressions amplify one another, and compressions that meet rarefactions balance one another out. Sometimes, the reflection and interference can combine to create a standing wave. Standing waves appear to shift back and forth or vibrate in segments rather than travel from place to place. This illusion of stillness is what gives standing waves their name. Standing sound waves have defined nodes, or areas of minimum pressure, and antinodes, or areas of maximum pressure. A standing wave's nodes are at the heart of acoustic levitation. Imagine a river with rocks and rapids. The water is calm in some parts of the river, and it is turbulent in others. Floating debris and foam collect in calm portions of the river. In order for a floating object to stay still in a fast-moving part of the river, it would need to be anchored or propelled against the flow of the water. This is essentially what an acoustic levitator does, using sound moving through a gas in place of water.
Acoustic levitation uses sound pressure to allow objects
to float.
By placing a reflector the right distance away from a transducer, the acoustic levitator creates a standing wave. When the orientation of the wave is parallel to the pull of gravity, portions of the standing wave have a constant downward pressure and others have a constant upward pressure. The nodes have very little pressure.
In space, where there is little gravity, floating particles collect in the standing wave's nodes, which are calm and still. On Earth, objects collect just below the nodes, where the acoustic radiation pressure, or the amount of pressure that a sound wave can exert on a surface, balances the pull of gravity. Acoustic Videos Nonlinear Sound and Acoustic Levitation Ordinary standing waves can be relatively powerful. For example, a standing wave in an air duct can cause dust to collect in a pattern corresponding to the wave's nodes. A standing wave reverberating through a room can cause objects in its path to vibrate. Low-frequency standing waves can also cause people to feel nervous or disoriented -- in some cases, researchers find them in buildings people report to be haunted. But these feats are small potatoes compared to acoustic levitation. It takes far less effort to influence where dust settles or to shatter a glass than it takes to lift objects from the ground. Ordinary sound waves are limited by their linear nature. Increasing the amplitude of the wave causes the sound to be louder, but it doesn't affect the shape of the wave form or cause it to be much more physically powerful.
However, extremely intense sounds -- like sounds that are physically painful to human ears -- are usually nonlinear. They can cause disproportionately large responses in the substances they travel through. Some nonlinear affects include:
Other Uses for Nonlinear Sound Several medical procedures rely on nonlinear acoustics. For example, ultrasound imaging uses nonlinear effects to allow doctors to examine babies in the womb or view internal organs. High-intensity ultrasound waves can also pulverize kidney stones, cauterize internal injuries and destroy tumors. Levitating objects with sound isn't quite as simple as aiming a high-powered transducer at a reflector. Scientists also must use sounds of the correct frequency to create the desired standing wave. Any frequency can produce nonlinear effects at the right volume, but most systems use ultrasonic waves, which are too high-pitched for people to hear. In addition to the frequency and volume of the wave, researchers also must pay attention to a number of other factors:
Other Levitator Setups Although a levitator with one transducer and one reflector can suspend objects, some setups can increase stability or allow movement. For example, some levitators have three pairs of transducers and reflectors, which are positioned along the X, Y and Z axes. Others have one large transmitter and one small, movable reflector; the suspended object moves when the reflector moves.
Objects hover in a slightly different area within the sound field depending on the influence of gravity.
It takes more than just ordinary sound waves to supply this amount of pressure. Some methods can levitate objects without creating sound heard by the human ear such as the one demonstrated at Otsuka Lab,[2]acrylic glass tank to create a large acoustic field. Acoustic levitation is usually used for containerless processing electromagnetic levitation but has the advantage of being able to levitate nonconducting materials. There is no known theoretical limit to what acoustic levitation can lift given enough vibratory sound, but in practice current technology limits the amount that can be lifted by this force to at most a few kilograms.[3] Acoustic levitators are used mostly in industry and for researchers of anti-gravity effects such as NASA; however some are commercially available to the public.Some are silent while others produce some audible sound. There are many ways of creating this effect, from creating a wave underneath the object and reflecting it back to its source, to using an which has become more important of late due to the small size and resistance of microchips and other such things in industry. Containerless processing may also be used for applications requiring very-high-purity materials or chemical reactions too rigorous to happen in a container. This method is harder to control than other methods of containerless processing.
Different forms of levitation have different scientific applications. Electrostatic levitation is the process of using an electric field to levitate a charged object and counteract the effects of gravity. It was used, for instance, in Robert Millikan's oil drop experiment and is used to suspend the gyroscopes in Gravity Probe B during launch. Magnetic levitation, maglev, or magnetic suspension is a method by which an object is suspended with no support other than magnetic fields. Magnetic pressure is used to counteract the effects of the gravitational and any other accelerations. Optical levitation is a method developed by Arthur Ashkin whereby a material is levitated against the downward force of gravity by an upward force stemming from photon momentum transfer. Typically photon radiation pressure of a vertical upwardly directed and focused laser beam of enough intensity counters the downward force of gravity to allow for a stable optical trap capable of holding small particles in suspension. Aerodynamic levitation is the use of gas pressure to levitate materials so that they are no longer in physical contact with any container. In scientific experiments this removes contamination and nucleation issues associated with physical contact with a container.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), by William L. Shirer, is a general history of Nazi Germany (1933–45), based upon captured Third Reich documents, the available diaries of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, General Franz Halder, and of the Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano, evidence and testimony from the Nuremberg Trials, British Foreign Office reports, and the author’s recollections of six years’ of Third Reich reportage, for newspapers, the United Press International (UPI), and CBS radio, ended by Nazi censorship in 1940.[1] In 1961, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich earned a National Book Award, and was adapted to television as a miniseries and broadcast by the American Broadcasting Company network in 1966.Whereas nearly all American journalists praised the book, academics were split. Some of these acknowledged Shirer's achievement, but most condemned it.[12] The harshest criticism tended to come from those who disagreed with the Sonderweg or "Luther to Hitler" thesis mentioned above. Klaus Epstein listed "four major failings": a crude understanding of German history; a lack of balance, leaving important gaps; no understanding of a modern totalitarian regime; and ignorance of current scholarship of the Nazi period.[9] Elizabeth Wiskemann stated in a 1961 review that the book was "not sufficiently scholarly nor sufficiently well written to satisfy more academic demands ... It is too long and cumbersome... Mr Shirer, has, however compiled a manual ... which will certainly prove useful."[16]
The National Security Agency can be traced to the May 20, 1949, originally the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA).[9] This organization was originally established within the U.S. Department of Defense under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The AFSA was to direct the communications and electronic intelligence activities of the U.S. military intelligence units: the Army Security Agency, the Naval Security Group, and the Air Force Security Service. However, that agency had little power and lacked a centralized coordination mechanism. The creation of NSA resulted from a December 10, 1951, memo sent by CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith to James S. Lay, Executive Secretary of the National Security Council.[10] The memo observed that "control over, and coordination of, the collection and processing of Communications Intelligence had proved ineffective" and recommended a survey of communications intelligence activities. The proposal was approved on December 13, 1951, and the study authorized on December 28, 1951. The report was completed by June 13, 1952. Generally known as the "Brownell Committee Report," after committee chairman Herbert Brownell, it surveyed the history of U.S. communications intelligence activities and suggested the need for a much greater degree of coordination and direction at the national level. As the change in the security agency's name indicated, the role of NSA was extended beyond the armed forces.
The creation of NSA was authorized in a letter written by President Harry S. Truman in June 1952. The agency was formally established through a revision of National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9 on October 24, 1952,[10] and officially came into existence on November 4, 1952. President Truman's letter was itself classified and remained unknown to the public for more than a generation[vague].
Riverbank produced book on Bacon cipher
http://books.google.com/books?id=dPwsAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=riverbank+laboratories&source=bl&ots=0DnT5fZGfh&sig=C1QFk4f3hJ5_-Qw7ADgRQSnxsQE&hl=en&ei=NQu4TLGQGJG-sAP1zYGWDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q&f=false
check mru http://all.net/journal/deception/MKULTRA/home.earthlink.net/_alanyu6/part2c1.htm
Most sound waves, including the musical sounds that actually reach our ears, are not standing waves. Normally, when something makes a wave, the wave travels outward, gradually spreading out and losing strength, like the waves moving away from a pebble dropped into a pond. But when the wave encounters something, it can bounce (reflection) or be bent (refraction). In fact, you can "trap" waves by making them bounce back and forth between two or more surfaces. Musical instruments take advantage of this; they produce pitches by trapping sound waves. Why are trapped waves useful for music? Any bunch of sound waves will produce some sort of noise. But to be a tone - a sound with a particular pitch - a group of sound waves has to be very regular, all exactly the same distance apart. That's why we can talk about the frequency and wavelength of tones.
Figure 1: A noise is a jumble of sound waves. A tone is a very regular set of waves, all the same size and same distance apart.Figure 1 (NoisevsTone.png)
So how can you produce a tone? Let's say you have a sound wave trap (for now, don't worry about what it looks like), and you keep sending more sound waves into it. Picture a lot of pebbles being dropped into a very small pool. As the waves start reflecting off the edges of the pond, they interfere with the new waves, making a jumble of waves that partly cancel each other out and mostly just roils the pond - noise.
But what if you could arrange the waves so that reflecting waves, instead of cancelling out the new waves, would reinforce them? The high parts of the reflected waves would meet the high parts of the oncoming waves and make them even higher. The low parts of the reflected waves would meet the low parts of the oncoming waves and make them even lower. Instead of a roiled mess of waves cancelling each other out, you would have a pond of perfectly ordered waves, with high points and low points appearing regularly at the same spots again and again. To help you imagine this, here are animations of a single wave reflecting back and forth and standing waves.
This sort of orderliness is actually hard to get from water waves, but relatively easy to get in sound waves, so that several completely different types of sound wave "containers" have been developed into musical instruments. The two most common - strings and hollow tubes - will be discussed below, but first let's finish discussing what makes a good standing wave container, and how this affects music theory.
In order to get the necessary constant reinforcement, the container has to be the perfect size (length) for a certain wavelength, so that waves bouncing back or being produced at each end reinforce each other, instead of interfering with each other and cancelling each other out. And it really helps to keep the container very narrow, so that you don't have to worry about waves bouncing off the sides and complicating things. So you have a bunch of regularly-spaced waves that are trapped, bouncing back and forth in a container that fits their wavelength perfectly. If you could watch these waves, it would not even look as if they are traveling back and forth. Instead, waves would seem to be appearing and disappearing regularly at exactly the same spots, so these trapped waves are called standing waves.
Enrico Fermi was involved in the development. Riverbank was for many years the leading acoustics testing facility in the world. So that fits in with the time travel story. Riverbank is operated or maintained now by a medium sized high tech company in Tyson's Corner. The CEO was formerly the President of Illinois Institute of Technology which is closely linked to Riverbank. I know most of the senior Execs of the company of which a number are retired Navy and Army officers. The CEO even calls his own home Villa.
Iona Miller reports from a 2008 contact with Black Swan "Julian West": "This is utmost importance to one of my own obsessive investigations. My paternal grandfather worked at the legendary Riverbank Labs for the infamous Col George Fabyan. One of the many controversial/occult studies undertaken at Riverbank was the attempt to prove that Shakespeare was Bacon. (Elizebeth Friedman, for example, was one of Fabyan's most important colleagues. It is through her work that a connection can be established between Fabyan and Atlantis-scholar Ignatius Donnelly.) Also conducted at Riverbank: Experiments in teleportation and time-travel via the use of acoustics. My grandfather had a very old set of Shakespeare's complete works (heavily annotated in more than one handwriting), which is now unfortunately lost, due to the ignorance and carelessness of his widow. (He never discussed the true nature of his work with his family; I myself have spent free time over several years just beginning to gather some real facts together (--discovering your work, linking Bacon to Germain, may be a big breakthrough in this research into the true nature and import of the experimental research conducted at Riverbank)). I also have in my own possession a few artifacts from Fabyan's estate, which came down from my grandfather."
She began investigating Riverbank Labs in 2006 with another high IQ MRU alumni with intelligence connections, (a former military intel internal security officer) responding to questions about the NSA cryptographer in Dan Brown's proposal on "Solomon's Key" which appeared later as the book "Lost Symbol." The father of his childhood friend "disposed of the incriminating walkin vaults in old NSA HQ at Riverbank Labs....the first overt attempt to voluntarily recruit me was Jan 4, 1967 at that same RIVERBANKLABS!" "I wasn't excited about the spiel Carl apparently agreed to. I had been warned two years previously by Dale Williams, son of Riverbank director, and also in 6th grade by Mrs. Jones former OSS cipherhead. I took those warnings lightly till personnel got used up due to Viet Nam and TEXACO linked side of NSA started using heavier tactics like extortion, threats and financial incentives. The author, William Shirer and son in law of Joe McCarthy (William Tierney) were both close friends of Friedman but never disclosed that, as far as i know. Shirer almost killed himself because he thought nobody would read Rise and Fall of Third Reich; he was also an associate of NSA/Norris at Tribune. I am pleased to contest any difference between what i say and NSA official version , with perfect confidence. They probably they won't even try. You might see that i fill in the large blank spots in official history." "Don't ever think that NSA began in 1952. I've seen their charter and it isn't the public one. Until 1970, NSA considered themselves the real OSS and they were run until 1990 by about 10 military men most of whom were among the few who managed to fight back effectively on Dec 7, 1941. They considered NSA Directors and US Presidents to be hired help and figureheads. BTW, Elizebeth Smith Friedman was a cousin of Dan Quayle's wife."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94KzmB2bI7s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpvbqdXJ1lM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veM5nZNBoW8&feature=related
Acoustic Levitation: While the Levitation Machine may have never been operational, the groundwork for the principles of acoustic levitation were laid at Riverbank Labs. Acoustic levitation is a method for suspending matter in a medium by using acoustic radiation pressure from intense sound waves in the medium. Acoustic levitation is possible because of the non-linear effects of intense sound waves. The idea that something so intangible can lift objects can seem unbelievable, but it's a real phenomenon. Acoustic levitation takes advantage of the properties of sound to cause solids, liquids and heavy gases to float. The process can take place in normal or reduced gravity. In other words, sound can levitate objects on Earth or in gas-filled enclosures in space. Scientists have developed a sound generator so powerful its shock waves can stun, and even kill people. Another group of researchers have developed another unusual application for sound: a method of "acoustic levitation" that could help maintain colonies on Mars or the moon by using high-pitched sound waves to remove alien dust.
Wired explains,Blasting a high-pitched noise from a tweeter into a pipe that focuses the sound waves can create enough pressure to lift troublesome alien dust off surfaces, according to a study published January in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Extra-terrestrial missions have been plagued by dust and debris, which cling to rovers and astronauts because lunar and Martian environments lack the Earth's water or atmosphere that can displace the particles.
According to Wired, Electrostatic charging from solar winds and UV radiation on the Moon makes this sharp dust cling to everything, including astronaut suits where it can work its way through the glove air locks. It also sticks to the solar panels that power rovers and other instruments.
See acoustic levitation for yourself in the video below! Using only sound waves, the scientists are able to lift mock "Martian and lunar dust" off of a solar panel. Cool!
WATCH: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/20/acoustic-levitation-stere_n_429558.html
To understand how acoustic levitation works, you first need to know a little about gravity, air and sound. First, gravity is a force that causes objects to attract one another. The simplest way to understand gravity is through Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation. This law states that every particle in the universe attracts every other particle. The more massive an object is, the more strongly it attracts other objects. The closer objects are, the more strongly they attract each other. An enormous object, like the Earth, easily attracts objects that are close to it, like apples hanging from trees. Scientists haven't decided exactly what causes this attraction, but they believe it exists everywhere in the universe.
Second, air is a fluid that behaves essentially the same way liquids do. Like liquids, air is made of microscopic particles that move in relation to one another. Air also moves like water does -- in fact, some aerodynamic tests take place underwater instead of in the air. The particles in gasses, like the ones that make up air, are simply farther apart and move faster than the particles in liquids.
Third, sound is a vibration that travels through a medium, like a gas, a liquid or a solid object. A sound's source is an object that moves or changes shape very rapidly. For example, if you strike a bell, the bell vibrates in the air. As one side of the bell moves out, it pushes the air molecules next to it, increasing the pressure in that region of the air. This area of higher pressure is a compression. As the side of the bell moves back in, it pulls the molecules apart, creating a lower-pressure region called a rarefaction. The bell then repeats the process, creating a repeating series of compressions and rarefactions. Each repetition is one wavelength of the sound wave.
The sound wave travels as the moving molecules push and pull the molecules around them. Each molecule moves the one next to it in turn. Without this movement of molecules, the sound could not travel, which is why there is no sound in a vacuum.Acoustic levitation uses sound traveling through a fluid -- usually a gas -- to balance the force of gravity. On Earth, this can cause objects and materials to hover unsupported in the air. In space, it can hold objects steady so they don't move or drift. The process relies on of the properties of sound waves, especially intense sound waves.
The Physics of Sound Levitation A basic acoustic levitator has two main parts -- a transducer, which is a vibrating surface that makes sound, and a reflector. Often, the transducer and reflector have concave surfaces to help focus the sound. A sound wave travels away from the transducer and bounces off the reflector. Three basic properties of this traveling, reflecting wave help it to suspend objects in midair. First, the wave, like all sound, is a longitudinal pressure wave. In a longitudinal wave, movement of the points in the wave is parallel to the direction the wave travels. It's the kind of motion you'd see if you pushed and pulled one end of a stretched Slinky. Most illustrations, though, depict sound as a transverse wave, which is what you would see if you rapidly moved one end of the Slinky up and down. This is simply because transverse waves are easier to visualize than longitudinal waves.
Second, the wave can bounce off of surfaces. It follows the law of reflection, which states that the angle of incidence -- the angle at which something strikes a surface -- equals the angle of reflection -- the angle at which it leaves the surface. In other words, a sound wave bounces off a surface at the same angle at which it hits the surface. A sound wave that hits a surface head-on at a 90 degree angle will reflect straight back off at the same angle. The easiest way to understand wave reflection is to imagine a Slinky that is attached to a surface at one end. If you picked up the free end of the Slinky and moved it rapidly up and then down, a wave would travel the length of the spring. Once it reached the fixed end of the spring, it would reflect off of the surface and travel back toward you. The same thing happens if you push and pull one end of the spring, creating a longitudinal wave.
Finally, when a sound wave reflects off of a surface, the interaction between its compressions and rarefactions causes interference. Compressions that meet other compressions amplify one another, and compressions that meet rarefactions balance one another out. Sometimes, the reflection and interference can combine to create a standing wave. Standing waves appear to shift back and forth or vibrate in segments rather than travel from place to place. This illusion of stillness is what gives standing waves their name. Standing sound waves have defined nodes, or areas of minimum pressure, and antinodes, or areas of maximum pressure. A standing wave's nodes are at the heart of acoustic levitation. Imagine a river with rocks and rapids. The water is calm in some parts of the river, and it is turbulent in others. Floating debris and foam collect in calm portions of the river. In order for a floating object to stay still in a fast-moving part of the river, it would need to be anchored or propelled against the flow of the water. This is essentially what an acoustic levitator does, using sound moving through a gas in place of water.
Acoustic levitation uses sound pressure to allow objects
to float.
By placing a reflector the right distance away from a transducer, the acoustic levitator creates a standing wave. When the orientation of the wave is parallel to the pull of gravity, portions of the standing wave have a constant downward pressure and others have a constant upward pressure. The nodes have very little pressure.
In space, where there is little gravity, floating particles collect in the standing wave's nodes, which are calm and still. On Earth, objects collect just below the nodes, where the acoustic radiation pressure, or the amount of pressure that a sound wave can exert on a surface, balances the pull of gravity. Acoustic Videos Nonlinear Sound and Acoustic Levitation Ordinary standing waves can be relatively powerful. For example, a standing wave in an air duct can cause dust to collect in a pattern corresponding to the wave's nodes. A standing wave reverberating through a room can cause objects in its path to vibrate. Low-frequency standing waves can also cause people to feel nervous or disoriented -- in some cases, researchers find them in buildings people report to be haunted. But these feats are small potatoes compared to acoustic levitation. It takes far less effort to influence where dust settles or to shatter a glass than it takes to lift objects from the ground. Ordinary sound waves are limited by their linear nature. Increasing the amplitude of the wave causes the sound to be louder, but it doesn't affect the shape of the wave form or cause it to be much more physically powerful.
However, extremely intense sounds -- like sounds that are physically painful to human ears -- are usually nonlinear. They can cause disproportionately large responses in the substances they travel through. Some nonlinear affects include:
- Distorted wave forms
- Shock waves, like sonic booms
- Acoustic streaming, or the constant flow of the fluid the wave travels through
- Acoustic saturation, or the point at which the matter can no longer absorb any more energy from the sound wave
Other Uses for Nonlinear Sound Several medical procedures rely on nonlinear acoustics. For example, ultrasound imaging uses nonlinear effects to allow doctors to examine babies in the womb or view internal organs. High-intensity ultrasound waves can also pulverize kidney stones, cauterize internal injuries and destroy tumors. Levitating objects with sound isn't quite as simple as aiming a high-powered transducer at a reflector. Scientists also must use sounds of the correct frequency to create the desired standing wave. Any frequency can produce nonlinear effects at the right volume, but most systems use ultrasonic waves, which are too high-pitched for people to hear. In addition to the frequency and volume of the wave, researchers also must pay attention to a number of other factors:
- The distance between the transducer and the reflector must be a multiple of half of the wavelength of the sound the transducer produces. This produces a wave with stable nodes and antinodes. Some waves can produce several usable nodes, but the ones nearest the transducer and reflector usually not suitable for levitating objects. This is because the waves create a pressure zone close to the reflective surfaces.
- In a microgravity environment, such as outer space, the stable areas within the nodes must be large enough to support the floating object. On Earth, the high-pressure areas just below the node must be large enough as well. For this reason, the object being levitated should measure between one third and half of the wavelength of the sound. Objects larger than two thirds of the sound's wavelength are too large to be levitated -- the field isn't big enough to support them. The higher the frequency of the sound, the smaller the diameter of the objects it's possible to levitate.
- Objects that are the right size to levitate must also be of the right mass. In other words, scientists must evaluate the density of the object and determine whether the sound wave can produce enough pressure to counteract the pull of gravity on it.
- Drops of liquid being levitated must have a suitable Bond number, which is a ratio that describes the liquid's surface tension, density and size in the context of gravity and the surrounding fluid. If the Bond number is too low, the drop will burst.
- The intensity of the sound must not overwhelm the surface tension of liquid droplets being levitated. If the sound field is too intense, the drop will flatten into a donut and then burst.
- Manufacturing very small electronic devices and microchips often involves robots or complex machinery. Acoustic levitators can perform the same task by manipulating sound. For example, levitated molten materials will gradually cool and harden, and in a properly tuned field of sound, the resulting solid object is a perfect sphere. Similarly, a correctly shaped field can force plastics to deposit and harden only on the correct areas of a microchip.
- Some materials are corrosive or otherwise react with ordinary containers used during chemical analysis. Researchers can suspend these materials in an acoustic field to study them without the risk of contamination from or destruction of containers.
- The study of foam physics has a big obstacle -- gravity. Gravity pulls the liquid downward from foam, drying and destroying it. Researchers can contain foam with in acoustic fields to study it in space, without the interference of gravity. This can lead to a better understanding of how foam performs tasks like cleaning ocean water.
Other Levitator Setups Although a levitator with one transducer and one reflector can suspend objects, some setups can increase stability or allow movement. For example, some levitators have three pairs of transducers and reflectors, which are positioned along the X, Y and Z axes. Others have one large transmitter and one small, movable reflector; the suspended object moves when the reflector moves.
Objects hover in a slightly different area within the sound field depending on the influence of gravity.
It takes more than just ordinary sound waves to supply this amount of pressure. Some methods can levitate objects without creating sound heard by the human ear such as the one demonstrated at Otsuka Lab,[2]acrylic glass tank to create a large acoustic field. Acoustic levitation is usually used for containerless processing electromagnetic levitation but has the advantage of being able to levitate nonconducting materials. There is no known theoretical limit to what acoustic levitation can lift given enough vibratory sound, but in practice current technology limits the amount that can be lifted by this force to at most a few kilograms.[3] Acoustic levitators are used mostly in industry and for researchers of anti-gravity effects such as NASA; however some are commercially available to the public.Some are silent while others produce some audible sound. There are many ways of creating this effect, from creating a wave underneath the object and reflecting it back to its source, to using an which has become more important of late due to the small size and resistance of microchips and other such things in industry. Containerless processing may also be used for applications requiring very-high-purity materials or chemical reactions too rigorous to happen in a container. This method is harder to control than other methods of containerless processing.
Different forms of levitation have different scientific applications. Electrostatic levitation is the process of using an electric field to levitate a charged object and counteract the effects of gravity. It was used, for instance, in Robert Millikan's oil drop experiment and is used to suspend the gyroscopes in Gravity Probe B during launch. Magnetic levitation, maglev, or magnetic suspension is a method by which an object is suspended with no support other than magnetic fields. Magnetic pressure is used to counteract the effects of the gravitational and any other accelerations. Optical levitation is a method developed by Arthur Ashkin whereby a material is levitated against the downward force of gravity by an upward force stemming from photon momentum transfer. Typically photon radiation pressure of a vertical upwardly directed and focused laser beam of enough intensity counters the downward force of gravity to allow for a stable optical trap capable of holding small particles in suspension. Aerodynamic levitation is the use of gas pressure to levitate materials so that they are no longer in physical contact with any container. In scientific experiments this removes contamination and nucleation issues associated with physical contact with a container.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), by William L. Shirer, is a general history of Nazi Germany (1933–45), based upon captured Third Reich documents, the available diaries of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, General Franz Halder, and of the Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano, evidence and testimony from the Nuremberg Trials, British Foreign Office reports, and the author’s recollections of six years’ of Third Reich reportage, for newspapers, the United Press International (UPI), and CBS radio, ended by Nazi censorship in 1940.[1] In 1961, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich earned a National Book Award, and was adapted to television as a miniseries and broadcast by the American Broadcasting Company network in 1966.Whereas nearly all American journalists praised the book, academics were split. Some of these acknowledged Shirer's achievement, but most condemned it.[12] The harshest criticism tended to come from those who disagreed with the Sonderweg or "Luther to Hitler" thesis mentioned above. Klaus Epstein listed "four major failings": a crude understanding of German history; a lack of balance, leaving important gaps; no understanding of a modern totalitarian regime; and ignorance of current scholarship of the Nazi period.[9] Elizabeth Wiskemann stated in a 1961 review that the book was "not sufficiently scholarly nor sufficiently well written to satisfy more academic demands ... It is too long and cumbersome... Mr Shirer, has, however compiled a manual ... which will certainly prove useful."[16]
The National Security Agency can be traced to the May 20, 1949, originally the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA).[9] This organization was originally established within the U.S. Department of Defense under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The AFSA was to direct the communications and electronic intelligence activities of the U.S. military intelligence units: the Army Security Agency, the Naval Security Group, and the Air Force Security Service. However, that agency had little power and lacked a centralized coordination mechanism. The creation of NSA resulted from a December 10, 1951, memo sent by CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith to James S. Lay, Executive Secretary of the National Security Council.[10] The memo observed that "control over, and coordination of, the collection and processing of Communications Intelligence had proved ineffective" and recommended a survey of communications intelligence activities. The proposal was approved on December 13, 1951, and the study authorized on December 28, 1951. The report was completed by June 13, 1952. Generally known as the "Brownell Committee Report," after committee chairman Herbert Brownell, it surveyed the history of U.S. communications intelligence activities and suggested the need for a much greater degree of coordination and direction at the national level. As the change in the security agency's name indicated, the role of NSA was extended beyond the armed forces.
The creation of NSA was authorized in a letter written by President Harry S. Truman in June 1952. The agency was formally established through a revision of National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9 on October 24, 1952,[10] and officially came into existence on November 4, 1952. President Truman's letter was itself classified and remained unknown to the public for more than a generation[vague].
Riverbank produced book on Bacon cipher
http://books.google.com/books?id=dPwsAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=riverbank+laboratories&source=bl&ots=0DnT5fZGfh&sig=C1QFk4f3hJ5_-Qw7ADgRQSnxsQE&hl=en&ei=NQu4TLGQGJG-sAP1zYGWDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q&f=false
check mru http://all.net/journal/deception/MKULTRA/home.earthlink.net/_alanyu6/part2c1.htm
Signal Intelligence - Top Codebreaker
Friedman turned out to be the true find. He fell in love with cryptographer Elizebeth Smith, and taught himself her specialty in a matter of weeks. He soon proved capable of cracking Britain's most
sophisticated field code at a speed that was previously believed impossible. But as Friedeman improved the code-breaking, Gallup's anticipated breakthrough on the authorship question failed to occur. The cryptanalysis simply didn't find anything useful and Friedman began to suspect that no cipher existed. After retirement, he and his wife returned to the Baconian ciphers. They proved false the Baconian theory in an incisive report that won them the Folger Shakespeare Library literary prize in 1955. This work was published in 1957 as "The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined."
The cryptology project might have dissolved had the United States not entered World War I in April 1917. The federal government had virtually no cryptographers, and Fabyan had plenty, so Riverbank
became the NSA of its day. Newlyweds William and Elizebeth Friedman were soon cracking German and Mexican codes for the U.S. military and helping Scotland Yard expose anti-British agents in North America. When the U.S. Army finally established its own Cipher Bureau, its first 88 officers were trained by Fabyan and the Friedmans at Riverbank. When they graduated, William Friedman took a commission himself and went to France. William Friedman became the nation's top code breaker and led the successful effort to crack the Japanese codes before World War II. Elizebeth Friedman did her code breaking for the Coast Guard and the
Treasury Department, and later established a secure communications system for the International Monetary Fund.
William Frederick Friedman (September 24, 1891 - November 12, 1969) served as a US Army cryptologist, running the research division of the Army's Signals Intelligence Service through the 1930s and its follow-on services right into the 1950s. He supervised the breaking of the Japanese Purple code in the late 1930s. Frank Rowlett led the SIS team which cracked the cypher machine. The output provided considerable information about Japanese diplomacy at the highest level througout World War II and afterwards, until Congressional hearings made public the fact that the US had been reading messages processed by that crypto system. Many consider Friedman one of the greatest cryptologists of all time, and his application of statistical methods to code-breaking one of the most significant advances in the field. He also coined much of the language used in decryption, introducing terms such as cryptography and cryptanalysis.
Friedman was born in Russia, the son of a postal worker who migrated to Pittsburgh in 1892. He studied at the Michigan Agricultural College in East Lansing and received a scholarship to work on genetics at Cornell University . Meanwhile George Fabyan, who ran a private research laboratory to study any project that caught his fancy, decided to set up his own genetics project and was referred to Friedman. Friedman joined Fabyan's Riverbank Laboratories outside Chicago in September 1915. As head of the Department of Genetics, one of the projects he ran studied the effects of moonlight on crop growth, and so he experimented with the planting of wheat during various phases of the moon.
Another of Fabyan's pet projects funded Elizabeth Wells Gallup's research into the coded messages which Sir Francis Bacon had allegedly hidden in various texts during the reign of Elizabeth I and King James. Believing that she had detected that many of Shakespeare's works also included such hidden messages, Gallup became convinced that Bacon wrote many, if not all, of William Shakespeare's works. Friedman had become something of an expert photographer while working on his other projects, and was asked to travel to England on several occasions to help Gallup photograph historical manuscripts during her research. At this point he became fascinated with cryptology, while he courted Elizebeth Smith, Mrs. Gallup's assistant and an accomplished cryptologist. They married, and soon after he became the director of the Department of Codes and Ciphers as well as of the Department of Genetics at Riverbank.
With the US's entry into World War I, Fabyan offered the services of his Department of Codes and Ciphers to the government. No Federal department existed for this kind of work (although both the Army and the Navy had had embryonic departments at various times), and soon Riverbank became the unofficial cryptographic center for the Federal GovernmentUS. During this period the Friedmans cracked a code used by German-funded Hindu radicals in the US who planned to ship arms to India to gain independence from Britain. Analysing the format of the messages, Riverbank realized that the code was based on a dictionary of some sort, a common encryption technique. The Friedmans soon managed to decode most messages, but only long after the case had come to trial did the book itself come to light: a German-English dictionary published in 1880.
The United States government decided to set up its own code-breaking service, and sent Army officers to Riverbank for training under Friedman. To support their training, Friedman produced a series of technical monographs, completing seven by early 1918. He then enlisted in the Army, and travelled to France to serve as the personal code-breaker for General John Pershing. He returned to the US in 1920 and published an eighth monograph, "The Index of Coincidence and its Applications in Cryptography", which is considered to be the most important single publication in modern cryptology to that time.
In 1921 he joined the government's American Black Chamber where he was placed in charge of researching new codes and ways to break them, and in 1922 he was promoted to head the Research and Development Division. After the dissolution of the Black Chamber in 1929, Friedman moved to the Army's Signals Intelligence Service (SIS) in a similar capacity.
During the 1920s a series of new cyphers processed by machines gained popularity, based largely on typewriter mechanicals attached to basic electrical circuitry - batteries, switches and lights. The first of such machines had been the Hebern Rotor Machine, designed in the US in 1915 by Edward Hebern. This system offered such security and simplicity of use that Hebern heavily promoted his company to investors, feeling that all companies would soon be using them and his company would clearly be successful. But the company went bankrupt when the war ended, and Hebern eventually landed in prison, convicted of stock manipulation.
Friedman realized that the new rotor machines would be important, and devoted some time to cracking Hebern's design. Over a period of years he discovered a number of problems common to most of the rotor machine designs. Examples of some dangerous features included having the rotors turn once with every keypress, and making the fast rotor (the one that turns with every keypress) at either end of the rotor stack. In this case the output generated by the machines will have strings of 26 letters that form a simple substitution cipher, and by collecting enough cyphertext and applying a standard statistical method known as the kappa test, he showed that he could, albeit with great difficulty, crack any code generated by such a machine.
Friedman then used his understanding of the rotor machines to develop several of his own that remained immune to his own attacks. He eventually developed nine designs, six of which remain still secret today. Some of his inventions while developing these systems only gained patents decades later, since the Defense Department regarded them as so critical that granting a patent would harm national security. The culmination of various earlier designs resulted in the SIGABA, which became the US's highest security encryption system during World War II. It was similar to the British Typex machine, and adapters were apparetnly built which could allow the two machines to interoperate. Neither was, as far as is publicly known, broken during WWII. In fact, SIGABA would still be quite good tady, in the computer era. computers.
In 1939 the Japanese introduced a new cypher machine system for their most secure diplomatic traffic to and from important embassies, replacing an earlier system SIS referred to as Red. The new cypher, referred to as Purple, proved quite difficult to crack. The Navy's OP-20-G and the SIS thought it might relate to the earlier mechanical cypher machines, and the SIS set about attacking it. After spending several months studying the cyphertexts and trying to discover the underlying patterns. Eventually, in an extraordianry achievement, the SIS team figured it out. Like the some of the prior Japanese designs, Purple didn't use 'rotors' unlike the German Enigma or the Hebern design, but used stepper switches like those used in automated telephone exchanges. Leo Rosen of the SIS built a machine and, astonishingly, used the same telephone stepper switch that the Japanese designer had used.
By the end of 1940 Friedman's team at the SIS had constructed an exact duplicate of the Purple machine, even though they had never seen one. With an understanding of Purple and duplicate machines of their own to use, the SIS could then decrypt an increasing amount of the Japanese traffic. One such intercept was the message to the Japanese Embassy in Washington ordering an end (on December 7th 1941) to the negotiations with the US. The message gave a clear indication of impending war, and was to have been delivered to the US State Department only hours prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The pressure of his responsibilites, including the Purple effort was too much and Friedman entered a hospital in 1941 with a nervous breakdown. After his release, he served as Director of Communications Research for the SIS for the rest of the war. Friedman visited the British code-breaking operations at the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park in 1941. He exchanged information on the techniques for attacking Purple for the British information on how they had broken the Enigma.
Following the WWII, Friedman remained in government signals intelligence. In 1949 he became head of the code division of the newly-formed Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA), and in 1952 become the chief cryptologist for the National Security Agency (NSA) when it formed to take over from the AFSA.
Friedman retired in 1956 and turned his attention, with his wife, to the problem that had originally brought them together: examining Bacon's codes. In 1957 they wrote The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined, in which they demonstrated unfortunate flaws in Gallup's work. His health began to fail in the late 1960s, and he died in 1969.
Elizebeth Friedman was also heavily involved in cryptography throughout much of the inter-War period, although typically on the civilian side. During the 1920s she gained some fame for repeatedly breaking the cyphers and codes being used by "rum runners" bringing alcohol into the US during Prohibition, and in 1927 the US Coast Guard hired her to help them with their policing operations. By 1930 she had cracked over 12,000 messages for the Coast Guard, the Bureau of Customs, the Bureau of Narcotics, the Bureau of Prohibition, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and the Department of Justice.
In 1934 she became involved in a particularly odd case, in which a Canadian-registered ship, the I'm Alone, sank after being chased into international waters off the US. She decoded several messages that demonstrated that a US citizen had actually paid for the ship, which therefore had ostensibe US-ownership. The result expanded the law regarding police chases, allowing a ship involved in illegal activity to be followed into international waters, and thereby extracting the US from an embarrassing political scandal.
During World War II Elizebeth Friedman moved to the OSS and became one of their chief cryptologists. She became involved in a particularly famous case in which a husband-and-wife team were sending coded messages to the Japanese, written on dolls that the wife sold through a thriving mail-order business. Velvalee Dickinson became known as "The Doll Woman" when the case was broken to the press. Elizebeth retired after her husband's death in 1969 and lived on until 1980.
* http://www.nsa.gov/honor/w_friedman.html
* http://www.sans.org/rr/history/friedman.php
In 1929, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson withdrew the Bureau's funds, on the ground that "gentlemen do not read each other's mail." Yardley, jobless in the Depression, awoke America to the importance of cryptology in his best-selling The American Black Chamber (1931). His bureau's work was assumed by the army's tiny Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) under the brilliant cryptologist William F. Friedman. During World War I, Friedman, at the Riverbank Laboratories, a think tank near Chicago, had broken new paths for cryptanalysis; soon after he joined the War Department as a civilian employee in 1921, he reconstructed the locations and starting positions of the rotors in a cipher machine. His work placed the United States at the forefront of world cryptology. Beginning in 1931, he expanded the SIS, hiring mathematicians first. By 1940, a team under the cryptanalyst Frank B. Rowlett had reconstructed the chief Japanese diplomatic cipher machine, which
the Americans called purple. These solutions could not prevent Pearl Harbor because no messages saying anything like "We will attack Pearl Harbor" were ever transmitted; the Japanese diplomats themselves were not told of the attack. Later in the war, however, the solutions of the radiograms of the Japanese ambassador in Berlin, enciphered in purple, provided the Allies with what Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall called "our main basis of information regarding Hitler's intentions in Europe." One revealed details of Hitler's Atlantic Wall defenses.
The U.S. Navy's OP-20-G, established in 1924 under Lieutenant Laurence F. Safford, solved Japanese naval codes. This work flowered when the solutions of its branch in Hawaii made possible the American victory at Midway in 1942, the midair shootdown of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in 1943, and the sinking of Japanese freighters throughout the Pacific war, strangling Japan. Its headquarters in Washington cooperated with the British code breaking agency, the Government Code and Cypher School, at Bletchley Park, northwest of London, to solve U-boat messages encrypted in the Enigma rotor cipher machine. This enabled Allied convoys to dodge wolf packs and so help win the Battle of the Atlantic. Teams of American cryptanalysts and tabulating machine engineers went to the British agency to cooperate in solving German Enigma and other cipher systems, shortening the land war in Europe. No other source of information—not spies, aerial photographs, or prisoner
interrogations—provided such trustworthy, high-level, voluminous, detailed, and prompt intelligence as code breaking.
Wallace Clement Sabine (1868-1919)
Sabine's Reverberation Formula
Wallace Clement Sabine was a pioneer in architectural acoustics. A century ago he started experiments in the Fogg lecture room at Harvard, to investigate the impact of absorption on the reverberation time. It was on the 29th of October 1898 that he discovered the type of relation between these quantities. Sabine derived an expression for the duration T of the residual sound to decay below the audible intensity, starting from a 1,000,000 times higher initial intensity:
T = 0.161 V/A
where V is the room volume in cubic meters, and A is the total absorption in square meters. Sabine's reverberation formula has been applied successfully for many years to determine material absorption coefficients by means of reverberation rooms. Keeping in mind some conditions with regard to the sound field diffusion and the value of A, Sabine's formula is still widely accepted as a very useful estimation method for the reverberation time in rooms.
Sabin as Unit of Sound Absorption
The unit of sound absorption is square meter, referring to the area of open window. This unit stems from the fact that sound energy travelling toward an open window in a room will not be reflected at all, but completely disappear in the open air outside. The effect would be the same if the open window would be replaced with 100 % absorbing material of the same dimensions.
Therefore, 1 square meter of 100 % absorbing material has an absorption of 1 square meter of open window. In honor of W.C. Sabine, the unit of absorption is also named sabin or metric sabin. However, these units are used not very often. One sabin is the absorption of one square foot of open window, and one metric sabin is the absorption of one square meter of open window.
Symphony Hall
The first auditorium that was designed by Sabine, applying his new insight in acoustics, was the new Boston Music Hall, currently known as the Symphony Hall. It was formally opened on October 15, 1900. Nowadays, it is still considered one of the three finest concert halls in the world.
Also visit the famous Riverbank Laboratories.
References
Wallace C. Sabine: Collected Papers on Acoustics. 1993, Trade Cloth ISBN 0-932146-60-0 Peninsula Publishing, Los Altos, U. S.. LCCN: 93-085708
sophisticated field code at a speed that was previously believed impossible. But as Friedeman improved the code-breaking, Gallup's anticipated breakthrough on the authorship question failed to occur. The cryptanalysis simply didn't find anything useful and Friedman began to suspect that no cipher existed. After retirement, he and his wife returned to the Baconian ciphers. They proved false the Baconian theory in an incisive report that won them the Folger Shakespeare Library literary prize in 1955. This work was published in 1957 as "The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined."
The cryptology project might have dissolved had the United States not entered World War I in April 1917. The federal government had virtually no cryptographers, and Fabyan had plenty, so Riverbank
became the NSA of its day. Newlyweds William and Elizebeth Friedman were soon cracking German and Mexican codes for the U.S. military and helping Scotland Yard expose anti-British agents in North America. When the U.S. Army finally established its own Cipher Bureau, its first 88 officers were trained by Fabyan and the Friedmans at Riverbank. When they graduated, William Friedman took a commission himself and went to France. William Friedman became the nation's top code breaker and led the successful effort to crack the Japanese codes before World War II. Elizebeth Friedman did her code breaking for the Coast Guard and the
Treasury Department, and later established a secure communications system for the International Monetary Fund.
William Frederick Friedman (September 24, 1891 - November 12, 1969) served as a US Army cryptologist, running the research division of the Army's Signals Intelligence Service through the 1930s and its follow-on services right into the 1950s. He supervised the breaking of the Japanese Purple code in the late 1930s. Frank Rowlett led the SIS team which cracked the cypher machine. The output provided considerable information about Japanese diplomacy at the highest level througout World War II and afterwards, until Congressional hearings made public the fact that the US had been reading messages processed by that crypto system. Many consider Friedman one of the greatest cryptologists of all time, and his application of statistical methods to code-breaking one of the most significant advances in the field. He also coined much of the language used in decryption, introducing terms such as cryptography and cryptanalysis.
Friedman was born in Russia, the son of a postal worker who migrated to Pittsburgh in 1892. He studied at the Michigan Agricultural College in East Lansing and received a scholarship to work on genetics at Cornell University . Meanwhile George Fabyan, who ran a private research laboratory to study any project that caught his fancy, decided to set up his own genetics project and was referred to Friedman. Friedman joined Fabyan's Riverbank Laboratories outside Chicago in September 1915. As head of the Department of Genetics, one of the projects he ran studied the effects of moonlight on crop growth, and so he experimented with the planting of wheat during various phases of the moon.
Another of Fabyan's pet projects funded Elizabeth Wells Gallup's research into the coded messages which Sir Francis Bacon had allegedly hidden in various texts during the reign of Elizabeth I and King James. Believing that she had detected that many of Shakespeare's works also included such hidden messages, Gallup became convinced that Bacon wrote many, if not all, of William Shakespeare's works. Friedman had become something of an expert photographer while working on his other projects, and was asked to travel to England on several occasions to help Gallup photograph historical manuscripts during her research. At this point he became fascinated with cryptology, while he courted Elizebeth Smith, Mrs. Gallup's assistant and an accomplished cryptologist. They married, and soon after he became the director of the Department of Codes and Ciphers as well as of the Department of Genetics at Riverbank.
With the US's entry into World War I, Fabyan offered the services of his Department of Codes and Ciphers to the government. No Federal department existed for this kind of work (although both the Army and the Navy had had embryonic departments at various times), and soon Riverbank became the unofficial cryptographic center for the Federal GovernmentUS. During this period the Friedmans cracked a code used by German-funded Hindu radicals in the US who planned to ship arms to India to gain independence from Britain. Analysing the format of the messages, Riverbank realized that the code was based on a dictionary of some sort, a common encryption technique. The Friedmans soon managed to decode most messages, but only long after the case had come to trial did the book itself come to light: a German-English dictionary published in 1880.
The United States government decided to set up its own code-breaking service, and sent Army officers to Riverbank for training under Friedman. To support their training, Friedman produced a series of technical monographs, completing seven by early 1918. He then enlisted in the Army, and travelled to France to serve as the personal code-breaker for General John Pershing. He returned to the US in 1920 and published an eighth monograph, "The Index of Coincidence and its Applications in Cryptography", which is considered to be the most important single publication in modern cryptology to that time.
In 1921 he joined the government's American Black Chamber where he was placed in charge of researching new codes and ways to break them, and in 1922 he was promoted to head the Research and Development Division. After the dissolution of the Black Chamber in 1929, Friedman moved to the Army's Signals Intelligence Service (SIS) in a similar capacity.
During the 1920s a series of new cyphers processed by machines gained popularity, based largely on typewriter mechanicals attached to basic electrical circuitry - batteries, switches and lights. The first of such machines had been the Hebern Rotor Machine, designed in the US in 1915 by Edward Hebern. This system offered such security and simplicity of use that Hebern heavily promoted his company to investors, feeling that all companies would soon be using them and his company would clearly be successful. But the company went bankrupt when the war ended, and Hebern eventually landed in prison, convicted of stock manipulation.
Friedman realized that the new rotor machines would be important, and devoted some time to cracking Hebern's design. Over a period of years he discovered a number of problems common to most of the rotor machine designs. Examples of some dangerous features included having the rotors turn once with every keypress, and making the fast rotor (the one that turns with every keypress) at either end of the rotor stack. In this case the output generated by the machines will have strings of 26 letters that form a simple substitution cipher, and by collecting enough cyphertext and applying a standard statistical method known as the kappa test, he showed that he could, albeit with great difficulty, crack any code generated by such a machine.
Friedman then used his understanding of the rotor machines to develop several of his own that remained immune to his own attacks. He eventually developed nine designs, six of which remain still secret today. Some of his inventions while developing these systems only gained patents decades later, since the Defense Department regarded them as so critical that granting a patent would harm national security. The culmination of various earlier designs resulted in the SIGABA, which became the US's highest security encryption system during World War II. It was similar to the British Typex machine, and adapters were apparetnly built which could allow the two machines to interoperate. Neither was, as far as is publicly known, broken during WWII. In fact, SIGABA would still be quite good tady, in the computer era. computers.
In 1939 the Japanese introduced a new cypher machine system for their most secure diplomatic traffic to and from important embassies, replacing an earlier system SIS referred to as Red. The new cypher, referred to as Purple, proved quite difficult to crack. The Navy's OP-20-G and the SIS thought it might relate to the earlier mechanical cypher machines, and the SIS set about attacking it. After spending several months studying the cyphertexts and trying to discover the underlying patterns. Eventually, in an extraordianry achievement, the SIS team figured it out. Like the some of the prior Japanese designs, Purple didn't use 'rotors' unlike the German Enigma or the Hebern design, but used stepper switches like those used in automated telephone exchanges. Leo Rosen of the SIS built a machine and, astonishingly, used the same telephone stepper switch that the Japanese designer had used.
By the end of 1940 Friedman's team at the SIS had constructed an exact duplicate of the Purple machine, even though they had never seen one. With an understanding of Purple and duplicate machines of their own to use, the SIS could then decrypt an increasing amount of the Japanese traffic. One such intercept was the message to the Japanese Embassy in Washington ordering an end (on December 7th 1941) to the negotiations with the US. The message gave a clear indication of impending war, and was to have been delivered to the US State Department only hours prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The pressure of his responsibilites, including the Purple effort was too much and Friedman entered a hospital in 1941 with a nervous breakdown. After his release, he served as Director of Communications Research for the SIS for the rest of the war. Friedman visited the British code-breaking operations at the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park in 1941. He exchanged information on the techniques for attacking Purple for the British information on how they had broken the Enigma.
Following the WWII, Friedman remained in government signals intelligence. In 1949 he became head of the code division of the newly-formed Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA), and in 1952 become the chief cryptologist for the National Security Agency (NSA) when it formed to take over from the AFSA.
Friedman retired in 1956 and turned his attention, with his wife, to the problem that had originally brought them together: examining Bacon's codes. In 1957 they wrote The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined, in which they demonstrated unfortunate flaws in Gallup's work. His health began to fail in the late 1960s, and he died in 1969.
Elizebeth Friedman was also heavily involved in cryptography throughout much of the inter-War period, although typically on the civilian side. During the 1920s she gained some fame for repeatedly breaking the cyphers and codes being used by "rum runners" bringing alcohol into the US during Prohibition, and in 1927 the US Coast Guard hired her to help them with their policing operations. By 1930 she had cracked over 12,000 messages for the Coast Guard, the Bureau of Customs, the Bureau of Narcotics, the Bureau of Prohibition, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and the Department of Justice.
In 1934 she became involved in a particularly odd case, in which a Canadian-registered ship, the I'm Alone, sank after being chased into international waters off the US. She decoded several messages that demonstrated that a US citizen had actually paid for the ship, which therefore had ostensibe US-ownership. The result expanded the law regarding police chases, allowing a ship involved in illegal activity to be followed into international waters, and thereby extracting the US from an embarrassing political scandal.
During World War II Elizebeth Friedman moved to the OSS and became one of their chief cryptologists. She became involved in a particularly famous case in which a husband-and-wife team were sending coded messages to the Japanese, written on dolls that the wife sold through a thriving mail-order business. Velvalee Dickinson became known as "The Doll Woman" when the case was broken to the press. Elizebeth retired after her husband's death in 1969 and lived on until 1980.
* http://www.nsa.gov/honor/w_friedman.html
* http://www.sans.org/rr/history/friedman.php
In 1929, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson withdrew the Bureau's funds, on the ground that "gentlemen do not read each other's mail." Yardley, jobless in the Depression, awoke America to the importance of cryptology in his best-selling The American Black Chamber (1931). His bureau's work was assumed by the army's tiny Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) under the brilliant cryptologist William F. Friedman. During World War I, Friedman, at the Riverbank Laboratories, a think tank near Chicago, had broken new paths for cryptanalysis; soon after he joined the War Department as a civilian employee in 1921, he reconstructed the locations and starting positions of the rotors in a cipher machine. His work placed the United States at the forefront of world cryptology. Beginning in 1931, he expanded the SIS, hiring mathematicians first. By 1940, a team under the cryptanalyst Frank B. Rowlett had reconstructed the chief Japanese diplomatic cipher machine, which
the Americans called purple. These solutions could not prevent Pearl Harbor because no messages saying anything like "We will attack Pearl Harbor" were ever transmitted; the Japanese diplomats themselves were not told of the attack. Later in the war, however, the solutions of the radiograms of the Japanese ambassador in Berlin, enciphered in purple, provided the Allies with what Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall called "our main basis of information regarding Hitler's intentions in Europe." One revealed details of Hitler's Atlantic Wall defenses.
The U.S. Navy's OP-20-G, established in 1924 under Lieutenant Laurence F. Safford, solved Japanese naval codes. This work flowered when the solutions of its branch in Hawaii made possible the American victory at Midway in 1942, the midair shootdown of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in 1943, and the sinking of Japanese freighters throughout the Pacific war, strangling Japan. Its headquarters in Washington cooperated with the British code breaking agency, the Government Code and Cypher School, at Bletchley Park, northwest of London, to solve U-boat messages encrypted in the Enigma rotor cipher machine. This enabled Allied convoys to dodge wolf packs and so help win the Battle of the Atlantic. Teams of American cryptanalysts and tabulating machine engineers went to the British agency to cooperate in solving German Enigma and other cipher systems, shortening the land war in Europe. No other source of information—not spies, aerial photographs, or prisoner
interrogations—provided such trustworthy, high-level, voluminous, detailed, and prompt intelligence as code breaking.
Wallace Clement Sabine (1868-1919)
Sabine's Reverberation Formula
Wallace Clement Sabine was a pioneer in architectural acoustics. A century ago he started experiments in the Fogg lecture room at Harvard, to investigate the impact of absorption on the reverberation time. It was on the 29th of October 1898 that he discovered the type of relation between these quantities. Sabine derived an expression for the duration T of the residual sound to decay below the audible intensity, starting from a 1,000,000 times higher initial intensity:
T = 0.161 V/A
where V is the room volume in cubic meters, and A is the total absorption in square meters. Sabine's reverberation formula has been applied successfully for many years to determine material absorption coefficients by means of reverberation rooms. Keeping in mind some conditions with regard to the sound field diffusion and the value of A, Sabine's formula is still widely accepted as a very useful estimation method for the reverberation time in rooms.
Sabin as Unit of Sound Absorption
The unit of sound absorption is square meter, referring to the area of open window. This unit stems from the fact that sound energy travelling toward an open window in a room will not be reflected at all, but completely disappear in the open air outside. The effect would be the same if the open window would be replaced with 100 % absorbing material of the same dimensions.
Therefore, 1 square meter of 100 % absorbing material has an absorption of 1 square meter of open window. In honor of W.C. Sabine, the unit of absorption is also named sabin or metric sabin. However, these units are used not very often. One sabin is the absorption of one square foot of open window, and one metric sabin is the absorption of one square meter of open window.
Symphony Hall
The first auditorium that was designed by Sabine, applying his new insight in acoustics, was the new Boston Music Hall, currently known as the Symphony Hall. It was formally opened on October 15, 1900. Nowadays, it is still considered one of the three finest concert halls in the world.
Also visit the famous Riverbank Laboratories.
References
Wallace C. Sabine: Collected Papers on Acoustics. 1993, Trade Cloth ISBN 0-932146-60-0 Peninsula Publishing, Los Altos, U. S.. LCCN: 93-085708
http://bealesolved.tripod.com/id10.html
The Hart Papers (Presenting details of an alleged
burial of gold, silver and jewels near
Goose Creek, Bedford County, Virginia,
by Thomas Jefferson Beale and associates
in November 1819 and December 1821)
by George L. Hart, Sr., in an attempt to bring up-to-date
all that is known and surmised
about the subject.
As of the present date, January 1, 1952, the writer will make an effort to put in writing all that he knows or surmises about the above subject, study and work upon which he spent many hours, yes, a total of many months, extending over a period from 1898 to 1912, more or less in collaboration with his brother, the late Clayton I. Hart, of Roanoke, Virginia.
Along in the summer of 1897 my brother, then a stenographer in the office of the Auditor of the Norfolk & Western Railroad, Roanoke, Va. , was requested by the chief clerk to the Auditor, N. H. Hazelwood, then residing at Montvale, (formerly Buford) Bedford County, Virginia, to make several copies of eight sheets of notepaper, two sheets headed simply "No. 1", three sheets headed "No. 2", and three sheets headed "No. 3".
Curiosity impelled Clayton to ask Mr. Hazlewood what such Figures, most unusual in his experience in the office, could possibly mean. In the beginning of their conversation Mr. Hazlewood stated that they were connected with a treasure, said to have been buried some four score years before near the foot of the Peaks of Otter, which stood in all their majesty overlooking his residence; and that, so far as he knew, the said treasure had never been located. Clayton obtained permission to retain a copy of the three ciphers or cryptograms.
Clayton immediately began studying the meaningless figures, discussing with Mr. Hazlewood from time to time this or that possibility; however, neither getting anywhere near the beginning of a solution. In a few months Mr. Hazelwood's health began to fail, whereupon he expressed an intention to give no further attention to the mystery, passing it on to Clayton with the admonition: "Go ahead on your own. I wish you success. Even though I have never made any headway in the matter of deciphering the figures, I remain reasonably confident the treasure lies buried where originally placed. About that time Clayton learned that a man by the name of Ward had spent many years trying to find a key, or keys, to the ciphers; that he had found a key to one cipher, but had finally abandoned his efforts and published in pamphlet form all that he knew about the treasure.
Thereupon, Clayton journeyed to Lynchburg, Va. , 50 miles east of Roanoke, secured a copy of the printed pamphlet, and redoubled his efforts to find a solution. The preceding manuscript was prepared by James B. Ward, of Campbell County, Virginia, contiguous to Lynchburg, in the year 1884. It was printed in pamphlet form by the Virginian Job Print, Lynchburg, Va. However, Clayton was informed by Ward that all but a few copies had been destroyed by fire, which broke out in the printing plant before a plan of distribution and sale at 50 cents a copy had been made and carried out.
About the year 1903 Clayton visited Mr. Ward, who then was at an advanced age. He confirmed all that is contained in the pamphlet; and his son, then U. S. Mail transfer clerk at the union station, Lynchburg, added his own confirmation, but in somewhat sad and solemn tones. Both are long since deceased.
The writer, and his brother Clayton, from 1897 until 1907 put in practically every moment of their spare time in an effort to Find a key, or keys, for the two ciphers which are as yet meaningless. Residing then at Roanoke, Va. , fourteen miles west of Montvale, (formerly Buford) Bedford County, Virginia, frequent trips were made by one or other of us, both of us together sometimes, to the supposed general location of the alleged buried treasure. And, on visits to Lynchburg, whence we journeyed occasionally on Professional work, we secured confirmation as to the Washington Hotel and its proprietor, Mr. Morriss, during the period 1819 to 1862.
My brother Clayton and I, separately and jointly, turned to the Constitution, Shakespeare, the Declaration of Independence, and numerous other books and documents that we thought might have been in the library of the Washington Hotel at Lynchburg, during Beale's sojourn there. We numbered the words forward and backward, finally skipping the first word and beginning with the second, then starting with the third word, fourth and fifth words, then taking every fifth word, tenth word, etc. However, we found no solution.
In 1898 my brother Clayton became interested in mesmerism and hypnotism. He wondered if this might be the means of securing a lead. Finding an excellent subject, who gradually drifted into crystal reading, Clayton began questioning him about the alleged treasure. Thinking he was, by this means, securing a worthwhile lead, Clayton asked the writer to sit in on a seance. The result of sitting will be given in detail near the end of this story. Of course, the writer, then as now, placed no faith in what came forth so glibly from the mouth of the crystal reader. But, like a drowning man, we were catching at any straws that might float about.
So, when the subject, during his trance, claimed he could see not only the alleged buried treasure, but would be able to lead us to it, we determined to test him out.
One nice Spring evening in 1899, the writer and his brother departed from Roanoke about five o'clock p. m. in the family buggy, drawn by the faithful family horse, Old Nell. We carried what we believed to be the necessary equipment, (other than dynamite, with which I would have no part), that equipment including picks, shovels, lanterns, rope, an axe, etc. And with us, of course, was our confident crystal reader-that is, confident to the Nth degree when he was gazing into the crystal ball.
We drove by "The Great Lick", a mile to the east of our old homestead, which, it was claimed, in the colonial days attracted wild animals desiring salt; on east through the gap of the Blue Ridge Mountains, to the tavern location in the village known in 1819-22 as Buford, (now Montvale) said tavern supposed to have been visited by Beale and his associates while seeking a place to bury the alleged treasure, and the subsequent trip.
Darkness had settled over the land, as we had expected, and which the better suited our purpose. Few people were moving about, and the faint light of a receding moon afforded opportunity to see objects of any size, which was just what we wanted. Driving across the railroad track, in the direction of the Peaks of Otter, we stopped on reaching a clump of bushes and many trees, about a mile up Goose Creek. My brother and the subject alighted, the subject was hypnotized, and they started off along Goose Creek, I following in the buggy. The trail led toward a gap in the mountain that would, if followed take one over into Botetourt County. And it might not be amiss to pause here and explain, that in the town of Buchanan, just over the mountain, there lived a quite prominent family of the name of Beale, who owned a plantation bordering on the James River. But to resume our narrative: About four miles up Goose Creek the subject stopped, seemed to be taking his bearings, then climbed a rail fence, jumped across a spring branch, ascended a hill, walked over the top and down into a crater-like place, covered with old oak trees and many leaves. Halting by the side of a large oak the subject pointed to the ground at its base and exclaimed: "There's the treasure! Can't you see it?" Well, had we finally reached the promised land? We did not believe it possible, and yet there was a certain plausibility about the confidence of the subject, so we took stock of our situation and planned our work. Lighting another lantern, we placed one on each side of the spot pointed out to us, and while one brother assembled the tools, the other walked up to the top of the crater-like place, and then down around the spot, to judge how much of the light from our lanterns might be seen in the neighborhood. Satisfied of our safety from intrusion, we agreed that each brother would dig, or shovel, for 10 minutes, then to be relieved by the other brother. This was to be continued until we located the treasure, or were satisfied that it did not rest there. In the meantime the subject was relieved of his trance and he lay down in the leaves, apparently wondering what we were about, but otherwise showing no interest.
We diligently set to work digging. After some six hours or more, in the wee small hours of the following morning, we had succeeded in digging a hole approximately six feet in depth, and slightly larger than a grave. Our strength was about gone, we were filled with misgivings, and, then, when about 8 of the 10 minutes of my brother's turn had been used, his pick struck a rock that produced a hollow sound. He looked up at me, his eyes flashing the fire of hope, and in my own enthusiasm, said: "You're played out! Permit me to relieve you now!" But, no, he replied: "Let me finish my allotted time".
After awhile we succeeded in removing the rock, but the hoped-for pots of gold and silver were not underneath it. Now, were we let down? To relieve our chagrin the subject was again hypnotized and asked to reveal the whereabouts the treasure. Rising on the balls of his feet, as if in disgust, he pointed to the left about two feet, directly underneath the great oak tree, and exclaimed: "There it is! You got over too far! Can't you see it?"
Thereupon I was completely let-down, and unwilling make any further attempt, certainly so far as that trip was concerned. Crestfallen, we wended our way back home. A week or two later my brother returned to the spot alone, I refusing to accompany him. He provided himself with dynamite, and upon his return home he informed me that he blasted out the old tree, and about everything near it-but, still no pots of gold, silver and jewels.
Was there anything more that we should and could do? After a short lapse of time my brother and I held a conference. We reviewed all that we had done, or attempted to do, and tried to map out a plan of future action, if any, we should take. We agreed that we had never heard that a person could transfer to the mind of a hypnotized subject, his own beliefs or knowledge, and get the subject to repeat them; yet we wondered if, after all, that was, in part at least, what had occurred. Certainly Clayton had never been anywhere near the spot to which the subject led us; nor had he any thought that Beale and his party had gone there while seeking a place to hide their treasure. So, why did the subject lead us to that spot? We could not then, nor do we now, find any satisfactory answer. Like many other questions that flash through one's mind, there seems no way to turn in the hope of getting the mystery cleared up.
Subsequent to my visit to the spot pointed out by the subject I gave less and less time to a study of the ciphers; and, about 1912, I ceased altogether. Clayton, on the other hand, made many visits to the spot, and continued his interest in the ciphers until his death September 6,1949.
In 1919 I moved to Washington, D. C. , and began the practice of my profession in that city, where, until 1946, I was extremely busy, night and day. So, after 1919, I only gave casual thought to the subject; now and then going back and reading over my old papers, and writing to some one, or talking with some one about it.
In the December,1924, number of THE AMERICAN I read an article about Colonel George Fabyan, of Riverbank Laboratories, Geneva, Ill. , and his success during World War I, and since, in reading code messages. I wrote to him, sending a copy of the three ciphers; and, after some correspondence back and forth, I forwarded to him a copy of such data as I had, but with special request that he not make any use of the manuscript, or ciphers, other than an attempt to decipher the ciphers. I made this request because my brother Clayton, then living, was trying to prepare something for Publication, which he never did.
Under date of February 3, 1925, Colonel Fabyan replied, and, among other things of no special interest to me, said:
"Now, in reference to the three ciphers: It seems improbable to us that a cipher of this character could be deciphered by a novice without the key, regardless of whether he put 20 years or 40 years on it. The cipher would be classified as a complex substitution cipher-variable-key system, or pseudo code; and even though one were told that the Declaration of Independence was the key, unless it was intimated as to how it was used as a key, we think that the novice would have been utterly baffled as to how to use it. The stumbling of a novice upon a method of this character lies rather beyond the range of possibility, and the conviction follows that they were in possession of the key of not only No. 2, but also of No. 1 and No. 3, with the result that the treasure referred to has long since been removed and converted.
"I repeat, that the problem has my interest, and I am writing in the vain hope that either you or Clayton I. Hart can give us further information, because the psychology of it is about all we have to go on in picking out our point of attack. In the meantime we will retain the pamphlet, and work on it as we can find time to do so. "
But I never heard further from Colonel Fabyan, and assume that he was unable to do anything toward clearing up the mystery.
As I often said to my brother, and wrote to Colonel Fabyan, it is possible that the whole thing is without basis. I have wondered if Ward might have written his manuscript based upon some figures he found, or made up; and yet, we have the word of Ward, his son, and friends to the contrary. Inquiry among some aged neighbors of Ward showed the high respect they had for him, and brought forth the statement that Ward would never practice deception. Just as a little sidelight on the ramifications of this work, I will add the following: In 1917 my wife asked me to drive her down for a visit to her first cousin, Mr. Otey, near Montvale, formerly Buford. On arrival at Montvale we were directed to drive along Goose Creek, cross that stream at the first crossing and drive up the other side, when we would reach Mr. Otey's place. All of which we did. While sitting out on the porch enjoying a glass of lemonade, I remarked that some years before I had had occasion to drive up the old road, on the other side of the creek, in a buggy. Being asked the occasion for such a visit, I told him the story of our digging. He laughed, loud and long, telling me it cleared up a mystery that had worried the people along the creek for upwards of 20 years. He stated that after the first hole we dug was discovered, some of his neighbors watched all night for a few days, armed with shotguns; and that after what was described as "the great explosion", a watch was again set for a week or 10 days, without result.
I have often wondered what became of the key, or keys, to the ciphers, left by Beale with some friend in St. Louis, when he was there in 1822, and visited the Planters Hotel.
When my brother Clayton secured a copy of the printed pamphlet containing Ward's story about the Beale papers, I think in the summer of 1898, he asked me to read same two or three times and then sit down and discuss the subject with him. This I did. We were at a loss to know how to begin any new or untried effort to unravel the mystery.
That Ward, by accident as he suggests succeeded in finding a key to cipher No. 2, outlining the number of pounds of gold and silver, along with jewels of a value of $13,000, claimed to have been buried, created a suspicion that the story might have been made up instead of founded on fact, with the idea of finding a more ready sale of the pamphlet. Beale's letter to Mr. Morriss, accompanying the ciphers, did not state which of the three ciphers described the place of concealment, but one would think that cipher No. 1 would be the starting point and have the most attention.
And why would Beale go to the trouble to prepare three ciphers, each based upon a different document?
If the story was not based upon fact but something prepared with the idea of making money from the sale of it, why was it allowed to remain in the printing plant until an accidental fire consumed practically all copies of it?
I suggested that my brother Clayton make a trip to Lynchburg and secure any information within reach, visiting Ward if he could locate him. He made several trips, and inquired all round the town, becoming convinced that it was more than probable the story was founded upon fact.
Thereupon Clayton redoubled his efforts to find a key, or keys, to Ciphers No. 1 and No. 3. He worked every night for upwards of two years without making any headway, but, like Ward, was unwilling to lay the subject aside.
Having studied hypnotism and mesmerism, which had become somewhat of a fad in Roanoke about that time, as a result of several demonstrations on the stage of the Academy of Music, Clayton began to try out his powers on numerous promising subjects. Finding one exceptionally good subject, in the person of an eighteen-year-old lad in the neighborhood of our old home, Magnolia, on the extreme northern line of the City of Roanoke, Va. , he, after a time, tried him out as a crystal reader or clairvoyant.
To Clayton's astonishment the boy, while in a state of trance, related a wonderful story, one which fitted in so well with what he had learned about the treasure that he determined to unravel the mystery, if possible, through that means. So he invited me to witness a seance and tell him what I thought of what I would see and hear. The subject was a quiet, unassuming, diffident boy. In his normal state he seemed quite effeminate, and never indulged in the use of profane language. Under the spell, however, he seemed transformed into a vigorous, determined man of the world, confident of himself, swearing blandly, and ready to meet all comers. The following is an account of that incident, written by me some ten years thereafter at the request of my brother, Clayton. I had no notes made at the time, so this account came purely from memory-and may be more or less inaccurate. However, the following depicts the occurrence as I remembered it, with Clayton acting as interrogator, I being merely a quiet listener and observer.
"Jewels, By Gosh! Diamonds! Rubies! Pearls! Emeralds! Whew! Ain't the old man rich?"
These and other similar exclamations came from the lips of medium as he gazed into the crystal ball. Oblivious of his surroundings, apparently in a trance, eyes bulging, features tense, a death-like grip on what was opaque to the bystander, but which, when revolved in the hands of the medium, like the earth on its axis, seemed an inspiration, the clairvoyant quickly turned back the pages of time to a century before, and claimed to read events then taking place. I stepped into the dimly lighted room, on the second floor of our old home, Magnolia, just after the medium had entered the state of trance, and while my brother, Clayton, was commanding:
"Time is moving backward quite fast, and will continue so moving until you reach November 1819. Go to Buford's Tavern, in a village of that name just to the east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and watch for the coming of several prairie schooners. Tell me as soon as they come in sight, and relate everything that those in charge do. Now, tell me everything they have with them, and everything they do. Keep close watch on them, and don't let them get out of your sight!"
Within about thirty seconds the medium straightened up, and, trembling as if from excitement, began to talk:
The Hart Papers (Presenting details of an alleged
burial of gold, silver and jewels near
Goose Creek, Bedford County, Virginia,
by Thomas Jefferson Beale and associates
in November 1819 and December 1821)
by George L. Hart, Sr., in an attempt to bring up-to-date
all that is known and surmised
about the subject.
As of the present date, January 1, 1952, the writer will make an effort to put in writing all that he knows or surmises about the above subject, study and work upon which he spent many hours, yes, a total of many months, extending over a period from 1898 to 1912, more or less in collaboration with his brother, the late Clayton I. Hart, of Roanoke, Virginia.
Along in the summer of 1897 my brother, then a stenographer in the office of the Auditor of the Norfolk & Western Railroad, Roanoke, Va. , was requested by the chief clerk to the Auditor, N. H. Hazelwood, then residing at Montvale, (formerly Buford) Bedford County, Virginia, to make several copies of eight sheets of notepaper, two sheets headed simply "No. 1", three sheets headed "No. 2", and three sheets headed "No. 3".
Curiosity impelled Clayton to ask Mr. Hazlewood what such Figures, most unusual in his experience in the office, could possibly mean. In the beginning of their conversation Mr. Hazlewood stated that they were connected with a treasure, said to have been buried some four score years before near the foot of the Peaks of Otter, which stood in all their majesty overlooking his residence; and that, so far as he knew, the said treasure had never been located. Clayton obtained permission to retain a copy of the three ciphers or cryptograms.
Clayton immediately began studying the meaningless figures, discussing with Mr. Hazlewood from time to time this or that possibility; however, neither getting anywhere near the beginning of a solution. In a few months Mr. Hazelwood's health began to fail, whereupon he expressed an intention to give no further attention to the mystery, passing it on to Clayton with the admonition: "Go ahead on your own. I wish you success. Even though I have never made any headway in the matter of deciphering the figures, I remain reasonably confident the treasure lies buried where originally placed. About that time Clayton learned that a man by the name of Ward had spent many years trying to find a key, or keys, to the ciphers; that he had found a key to one cipher, but had finally abandoned his efforts and published in pamphlet form all that he knew about the treasure.
Thereupon, Clayton journeyed to Lynchburg, Va. , 50 miles east of Roanoke, secured a copy of the printed pamphlet, and redoubled his efforts to find a solution. The preceding manuscript was prepared by James B. Ward, of Campbell County, Virginia, contiguous to Lynchburg, in the year 1884. It was printed in pamphlet form by the Virginian Job Print, Lynchburg, Va. However, Clayton was informed by Ward that all but a few copies had been destroyed by fire, which broke out in the printing plant before a plan of distribution and sale at 50 cents a copy had been made and carried out.
About the year 1903 Clayton visited Mr. Ward, who then was at an advanced age. He confirmed all that is contained in the pamphlet; and his son, then U. S. Mail transfer clerk at the union station, Lynchburg, added his own confirmation, but in somewhat sad and solemn tones. Both are long since deceased.
The writer, and his brother Clayton, from 1897 until 1907 put in practically every moment of their spare time in an effort to Find a key, or keys, for the two ciphers which are as yet meaningless. Residing then at Roanoke, Va. , fourteen miles west of Montvale, (formerly Buford) Bedford County, Virginia, frequent trips were made by one or other of us, both of us together sometimes, to the supposed general location of the alleged buried treasure. And, on visits to Lynchburg, whence we journeyed occasionally on Professional work, we secured confirmation as to the Washington Hotel and its proprietor, Mr. Morriss, during the period 1819 to 1862.
My brother Clayton and I, separately and jointly, turned to the Constitution, Shakespeare, the Declaration of Independence, and numerous other books and documents that we thought might have been in the library of the Washington Hotel at Lynchburg, during Beale's sojourn there. We numbered the words forward and backward, finally skipping the first word and beginning with the second, then starting with the third word, fourth and fifth words, then taking every fifth word, tenth word, etc. However, we found no solution.
In 1898 my brother Clayton became interested in mesmerism and hypnotism. He wondered if this might be the means of securing a lead. Finding an excellent subject, who gradually drifted into crystal reading, Clayton began questioning him about the alleged treasure. Thinking he was, by this means, securing a worthwhile lead, Clayton asked the writer to sit in on a seance. The result of sitting will be given in detail near the end of this story. Of course, the writer, then as now, placed no faith in what came forth so glibly from the mouth of the crystal reader. But, like a drowning man, we were catching at any straws that might float about.
So, when the subject, during his trance, claimed he could see not only the alleged buried treasure, but would be able to lead us to it, we determined to test him out.
One nice Spring evening in 1899, the writer and his brother departed from Roanoke about five o'clock p. m. in the family buggy, drawn by the faithful family horse, Old Nell. We carried what we believed to be the necessary equipment, (other than dynamite, with which I would have no part), that equipment including picks, shovels, lanterns, rope, an axe, etc. And with us, of course, was our confident crystal reader-that is, confident to the Nth degree when he was gazing into the crystal ball.
We drove by "The Great Lick", a mile to the east of our old homestead, which, it was claimed, in the colonial days attracted wild animals desiring salt; on east through the gap of the Blue Ridge Mountains, to the tavern location in the village known in 1819-22 as Buford, (now Montvale) said tavern supposed to have been visited by Beale and his associates while seeking a place to bury the alleged treasure, and the subsequent trip.
Darkness had settled over the land, as we had expected, and which the better suited our purpose. Few people were moving about, and the faint light of a receding moon afforded opportunity to see objects of any size, which was just what we wanted. Driving across the railroad track, in the direction of the Peaks of Otter, we stopped on reaching a clump of bushes and many trees, about a mile up Goose Creek. My brother and the subject alighted, the subject was hypnotized, and they started off along Goose Creek, I following in the buggy. The trail led toward a gap in the mountain that would, if followed take one over into Botetourt County. And it might not be amiss to pause here and explain, that in the town of Buchanan, just over the mountain, there lived a quite prominent family of the name of Beale, who owned a plantation bordering on the James River. But to resume our narrative: About four miles up Goose Creek the subject stopped, seemed to be taking his bearings, then climbed a rail fence, jumped across a spring branch, ascended a hill, walked over the top and down into a crater-like place, covered with old oak trees and many leaves. Halting by the side of a large oak the subject pointed to the ground at its base and exclaimed: "There's the treasure! Can't you see it?" Well, had we finally reached the promised land? We did not believe it possible, and yet there was a certain plausibility about the confidence of the subject, so we took stock of our situation and planned our work. Lighting another lantern, we placed one on each side of the spot pointed out to us, and while one brother assembled the tools, the other walked up to the top of the crater-like place, and then down around the spot, to judge how much of the light from our lanterns might be seen in the neighborhood. Satisfied of our safety from intrusion, we agreed that each brother would dig, or shovel, for 10 minutes, then to be relieved by the other brother. This was to be continued until we located the treasure, or were satisfied that it did not rest there. In the meantime the subject was relieved of his trance and he lay down in the leaves, apparently wondering what we were about, but otherwise showing no interest.
We diligently set to work digging. After some six hours or more, in the wee small hours of the following morning, we had succeeded in digging a hole approximately six feet in depth, and slightly larger than a grave. Our strength was about gone, we were filled with misgivings, and, then, when about 8 of the 10 minutes of my brother's turn had been used, his pick struck a rock that produced a hollow sound. He looked up at me, his eyes flashing the fire of hope, and in my own enthusiasm, said: "You're played out! Permit me to relieve you now!" But, no, he replied: "Let me finish my allotted time".
After awhile we succeeded in removing the rock, but the hoped-for pots of gold and silver were not underneath it. Now, were we let down? To relieve our chagrin the subject was again hypnotized and asked to reveal the whereabouts the treasure. Rising on the balls of his feet, as if in disgust, he pointed to the left about two feet, directly underneath the great oak tree, and exclaimed: "There it is! You got over too far! Can't you see it?"
Thereupon I was completely let-down, and unwilling make any further attempt, certainly so far as that trip was concerned. Crestfallen, we wended our way back home. A week or two later my brother returned to the spot alone, I refusing to accompany him. He provided himself with dynamite, and upon his return home he informed me that he blasted out the old tree, and about everything near it-but, still no pots of gold, silver and jewels.
Was there anything more that we should and could do? After a short lapse of time my brother and I held a conference. We reviewed all that we had done, or attempted to do, and tried to map out a plan of future action, if any, we should take. We agreed that we had never heard that a person could transfer to the mind of a hypnotized subject, his own beliefs or knowledge, and get the subject to repeat them; yet we wondered if, after all, that was, in part at least, what had occurred. Certainly Clayton had never been anywhere near the spot to which the subject led us; nor had he any thought that Beale and his party had gone there while seeking a place to hide their treasure. So, why did the subject lead us to that spot? We could not then, nor do we now, find any satisfactory answer. Like many other questions that flash through one's mind, there seems no way to turn in the hope of getting the mystery cleared up.
Subsequent to my visit to the spot pointed out by the subject I gave less and less time to a study of the ciphers; and, about 1912, I ceased altogether. Clayton, on the other hand, made many visits to the spot, and continued his interest in the ciphers until his death September 6,1949.
In 1919 I moved to Washington, D. C. , and began the practice of my profession in that city, where, until 1946, I was extremely busy, night and day. So, after 1919, I only gave casual thought to the subject; now and then going back and reading over my old papers, and writing to some one, or talking with some one about it.
In the December,1924, number of THE AMERICAN I read an article about Colonel George Fabyan, of Riverbank Laboratories, Geneva, Ill. , and his success during World War I, and since, in reading code messages. I wrote to him, sending a copy of the three ciphers; and, after some correspondence back and forth, I forwarded to him a copy of such data as I had, but with special request that he not make any use of the manuscript, or ciphers, other than an attempt to decipher the ciphers. I made this request because my brother Clayton, then living, was trying to prepare something for Publication, which he never did.
Under date of February 3, 1925, Colonel Fabyan replied, and, among other things of no special interest to me, said:
"Now, in reference to the three ciphers: It seems improbable to us that a cipher of this character could be deciphered by a novice without the key, regardless of whether he put 20 years or 40 years on it. The cipher would be classified as a complex substitution cipher-variable-key system, or pseudo code; and even though one were told that the Declaration of Independence was the key, unless it was intimated as to how it was used as a key, we think that the novice would have been utterly baffled as to how to use it. The stumbling of a novice upon a method of this character lies rather beyond the range of possibility, and the conviction follows that they were in possession of the key of not only No. 2, but also of No. 1 and No. 3, with the result that the treasure referred to has long since been removed and converted.
"I repeat, that the problem has my interest, and I am writing in the vain hope that either you or Clayton I. Hart can give us further information, because the psychology of it is about all we have to go on in picking out our point of attack. In the meantime we will retain the pamphlet, and work on it as we can find time to do so. "
But I never heard further from Colonel Fabyan, and assume that he was unable to do anything toward clearing up the mystery.
As I often said to my brother, and wrote to Colonel Fabyan, it is possible that the whole thing is without basis. I have wondered if Ward might have written his manuscript based upon some figures he found, or made up; and yet, we have the word of Ward, his son, and friends to the contrary. Inquiry among some aged neighbors of Ward showed the high respect they had for him, and brought forth the statement that Ward would never practice deception. Just as a little sidelight on the ramifications of this work, I will add the following: In 1917 my wife asked me to drive her down for a visit to her first cousin, Mr. Otey, near Montvale, formerly Buford. On arrival at Montvale we were directed to drive along Goose Creek, cross that stream at the first crossing and drive up the other side, when we would reach Mr. Otey's place. All of which we did. While sitting out on the porch enjoying a glass of lemonade, I remarked that some years before I had had occasion to drive up the old road, on the other side of the creek, in a buggy. Being asked the occasion for such a visit, I told him the story of our digging. He laughed, loud and long, telling me it cleared up a mystery that had worried the people along the creek for upwards of 20 years. He stated that after the first hole we dug was discovered, some of his neighbors watched all night for a few days, armed with shotguns; and that after what was described as "the great explosion", a watch was again set for a week or 10 days, without result.
I have often wondered what became of the key, or keys, to the ciphers, left by Beale with some friend in St. Louis, when he was there in 1822, and visited the Planters Hotel.
When my brother Clayton secured a copy of the printed pamphlet containing Ward's story about the Beale papers, I think in the summer of 1898, he asked me to read same two or three times and then sit down and discuss the subject with him. This I did. We were at a loss to know how to begin any new or untried effort to unravel the mystery.
That Ward, by accident as he suggests succeeded in finding a key to cipher No. 2, outlining the number of pounds of gold and silver, along with jewels of a value of $13,000, claimed to have been buried, created a suspicion that the story might have been made up instead of founded on fact, with the idea of finding a more ready sale of the pamphlet. Beale's letter to Mr. Morriss, accompanying the ciphers, did not state which of the three ciphers described the place of concealment, but one would think that cipher No. 1 would be the starting point and have the most attention.
And why would Beale go to the trouble to prepare three ciphers, each based upon a different document?
If the story was not based upon fact but something prepared with the idea of making money from the sale of it, why was it allowed to remain in the printing plant until an accidental fire consumed practically all copies of it?
I suggested that my brother Clayton make a trip to Lynchburg and secure any information within reach, visiting Ward if he could locate him. He made several trips, and inquired all round the town, becoming convinced that it was more than probable the story was founded upon fact.
Thereupon Clayton redoubled his efforts to find a key, or keys, to Ciphers No. 1 and No. 3. He worked every night for upwards of two years without making any headway, but, like Ward, was unwilling to lay the subject aside.
Having studied hypnotism and mesmerism, which had become somewhat of a fad in Roanoke about that time, as a result of several demonstrations on the stage of the Academy of Music, Clayton began to try out his powers on numerous promising subjects. Finding one exceptionally good subject, in the person of an eighteen-year-old lad in the neighborhood of our old home, Magnolia, on the extreme northern line of the City of Roanoke, Va. , he, after a time, tried him out as a crystal reader or clairvoyant.
To Clayton's astonishment the boy, while in a state of trance, related a wonderful story, one which fitted in so well with what he had learned about the treasure that he determined to unravel the mystery, if possible, through that means. So he invited me to witness a seance and tell him what I thought of what I would see and hear. The subject was a quiet, unassuming, diffident boy. In his normal state he seemed quite effeminate, and never indulged in the use of profane language. Under the spell, however, he seemed transformed into a vigorous, determined man of the world, confident of himself, swearing blandly, and ready to meet all comers. The following is an account of that incident, written by me some ten years thereafter at the request of my brother, Clayton. I had no notes made at the time, so this account came purely from memory-and may be more or less inaccurate. However, the following depicts the occurrence as I remembered it, with Clayton acting as interrogator, I being merely a quiet listener and observer.
"Jewels, By Gosh! Diamonds! Rubies! Pearls! Emeralds! Whew! Ain't the old man rich?"
These and other similar exclamations came from the lips of medium as he gazed into the crystal ball. Oblivious of his surroundings, apparently in a trance, eyes bulging, features tense, a death-like grip on what was opaque to the bystander, but which, when revolved in the hands of the medium, like the earth on its axis, seemed an inspiration, the clairvoyant quickly turned back the pages of time to a century before, and claimed to read events then taking place. I stepped into the dimly lighted room, on the second floor of our old home, Magnolia, just after the medium had entered the state of trance, and while my brother, Clayton, was commanding:
"Time is moving backward quite fast, and will continue so moving until you reach November 1819. Go to Buford's Tavern, in a village of that name just to the east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and watch for the coming of several prairie schooners. Tell me as soon as they come in sight, and relate everything that those in charge do. Now, tell me everything they have with them, and everything they do. Keep close watch on them, and don't let them get out of your sight!"
Within about thirty seconds the medium straightened up, and, trembling as if from excitement, began to talk: