Guest Lecture, Due on September 10

Difficult: Truthfully, I had trouble finding much of difficulty in the guest lecture. The codes the Mormons used seemed pretty simple, with the exception of Larrabee's cipher used by George Q. Cannon. The method of implementation for this code confused me in class, but when I read the speaker's notes (posted on the readings assignment site) afterwards it made perfect sense. Despite the author saying the code was the "most perfect ever invented", I couldn't help but notice that this code very strongly resembles the Vigenere Cipher presented in our book. The major difference seems to be that instead of having the key word represent a vector, you have to have the list to match the keyword with the code you want. This seems to be less secure to me, if you are using the list posted in the book that Larrabee wrote, then it only becomes a problem of discovering your key word. Possibly they used their own cipher keys.

Reflective: While the codes used by early mormons were not difficult to understand how to use, it was fascinating that they even had them! I had never heard of this before, nor did I know that there was research in this field. I had to wonder how one would go about decoding the telegraph cipher where words stood for ideas. I think that an outsider would really have no hope of deciphering such a message. I had also never heard of the "Deseret Alphabet" before, nor had my native Utahn wife. Why were they trying to make a new written language? The codes and their uses interested me. I also want to find out more about George Q. Cannon now. He sounds more awesome than previously imagined.