23-04-2020, 08:05 PM
One of the most interesting (in this respect) pamphlets in my little collection is a Spanish treatise on a 16th century diplomatic cipher, published in the mid 1950's by a couple of Spanish intelligence agents.
Now, it is interesting not for what they discovered (bugger all, frankly) but because of the way the whole thing is phrased.
The boys claimed to have cracked it in "a couple of hours". The whole thing is nonsense, but of course crack intelligence agents in the time of Franco (the fascist dictator) weren't going to get anywhere if they didn't pretend to be top notch.
So this whole thing is actually about them, in a very big way, and not what they had "discovered". But it is constantly cited in later studies, and I have come across references to it in scholarly articles written decades later.
Now, it is interesting not for what they discovered (bugger all, frankly) but because of the way the whole thing is phrased.
The boys claimed to have cracked it in "a couple of hours". The whole thing is nonsense, but of course crack intelligence agents in the time of Franco (the fascist dictator) weren't going to get anywhere if they didn't pretend to be top notch.
So this whole thing is actually about them, in a very big way, and not what they had "discovered". But it is constantly cited in later studies, and I have come across references to it in scholarly articles written decades later.
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