DRESS CODE SOLVED
In 2013, an archaeologist on holiday bought an old brown silk dress in an antique store. When she got it home, she discovered a paper in a hidden pocket covered in odd words: Bismark, omit, leafage, buck, bank. Spring, wilderness, lining. What could it mean? Was it a code?
She posted the note on code-breaking sites, but for 10 years no one cracked it. Until one clever coder had an idea. Maybe it was a telegraph code? In the 1880s, when the dress was made, telegraphs charged by the word to send messages. To save money, companies had books of single words that stood for common phrases, such as “Blue” to mean “The box arrives Tuesday.”
Librarians finally found a code book from the National Weather Service…