from a distance, the couple’s bodies like churches poking out of the haze. Together they produced the first scientifically constructed set of pencil-and-paper codes and ciphers in army history. There was still a place for “hand” or “paper” ciphers as opposed to machine ciphers. The best paper system was more secure than a weak machine, or a strong machine improperly handled, which is why inventors of cipher machines in the 1920s were struggling to make their prototypes easy to use, almost idiot-proof. At the request of the army, William
