A love-ly code: The Cupid Stamp Lovers’ Code

The Tower Project Blog explores, a bit, a love-ly code:

This pamphlet Cupid’s code for the transmission of secret messages by means of the language of postage stamps by Bury George:

The code uses the position and orientation of the stamp – with eight positions and eight orientations there are 64 basic messages – or 128 if two stamps were used. The messages are printed in perforated strips, and can be re-arranged, giving according to the author “close upon 270,000 different ways, so that no attempt to discover any particular combination could possible succeed.” The code books were sold in pairs,and it was even possible to buy a specially arranged duplicate code “guaranteed non-existent elsewhere” for the bargain sum of 6 shillings.

(Thanks to investigator Lila Dalton for bringing this to our attention.)