Sir Francis Bacon and the Baconian Cipher
Created | Updated May 1, 2006
An englishman of noble birth, Sir Francis Bacon developed many revolutionary works, and a clever cipher to hide both his identity and important messages to those with whom he associated
His Life
Born to Nicolas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Seals for Queen Elizabeth I, in 1561, he found himself a noble by birth. The death of his father, when Francis was merely 18 years old left him nearly penniless, and drew him towards politics and law, and he found himself at 23 a member of the House of Commons. His career truly began when James I came into power, as Elizabeth I had never trusted Bacon. He rose to the rank of Lord Chancellor of England, and began pursuing his interest in writing1. Becoming highly opinionated about Aristotlism, Scholasticism and New Renaissance Humanism at an early age, he began to pursue alternatives to these particular philosophies. His opposition to these three philosophies can be found in his works, the most notable being:
- Colours of Good and Evil (1597)
- Meditationes Sacrae (1597)
(Sacred Meditations) - The Advancement of Learning (1605)
- Novum Organum2 (1620)
(Implement Revolutions) - Historia Ventorum (1622)
(A History of Wind) - Historia Vitae et Mortis (1622)
(A History of Life and Death - Instauratio Magna (1623)
(Great Restoration) - Apothegms (1624)
(Philosophical Musings)
He died April 9, 1626, from pneumonia, after engaging in a meat preserving experiment, brought on by a revelation about snow.
The Baconian Cipher
Not so much a cipher as steganography3, Sir Francis Bacon devised the aptly named "Baconian Cipher", to not control the content of his messages, but the way in which the text is written. An encoded message could look similar to this:
I extend my hand in welcome to you
or
I eXTEnd My haNd In wElComE To You
Difficult to comprehend, a very well thought out form of steganography. To encode such a message, we will need the following letter equivalents:
| A: AAAAA | G: AABBA | N: ABBAA | T: BAABA |
| B: AAAAB | H: AABBB | O: ABBAB | U,V: BAABB |
| C: AAABA | I,J: ABAAA | P: ABBBA | W: BABAA |
| D: AAABB | K: ABAAB | Q: ABBBB | X: BABAB |
| E: AABAA | L: ABABA | R: BAAAA | Y: BABBA |
| F: AABAB | M: ABABB | S: BAAAB | Z: BABBB |
Seems somewhat confusing, which it is of course intended to be4
However if we examine each value of letters, there is only A or B5. These are used to denote two different types of text, be it size, italic, color, or anything else. Therefor to encode a message, we simply need to break up some text into sections of 5 (as the cipher values work with 5 characters each)
Staying with the original example:
I extend my hand in welcome to you
I exte / nd my h / and in / welco / me to y / ou
Now that we have 5 different sections, we can set up our encoded message by aligning text with each value we want:
(the example text reads Hello)
I exte / nd my h / and in / welco / me to y / ou
a abbb / aa ba a / aba ba / ababa / ab ba b / __
The last two letters dont fit into the cipher, therefor they are superfluous to the message. Now that we have the values for each letter, we can use one of many encoding values:
In this example, i'll use
A: Regular text
B: Italic Text
Therefore the text will be translated to:
I extend my hand in welcome to you
I extend my hand in welcome to you
This text is difficult to differentiate from its uncoded version, making it an essentially unrecognisable cipher.
Reverting from its original form proves to be somewhat the same, as you simply reverse the steps. Find which are the regular characters, and which are different, and compare them to the value chart
The Shakespeare Authorship Question
The true identity of Shakespeare6 remains controversial
More information about the prospect of Bacon as the writer of these works can be found here
Further Information:
- Sir Francis Bacon
- Shakespeare authorship and the Baconian cipher
- The Baconian Cipher
- Modern Cryptography
- History of Cryptography
1Some skeptical researchers believe Sir Francis Bacon to have written many amazing compositions under the moniker "Shakespeare". The authorship question however remains under research, in the meantime being attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford.2One of two parts of the unfinished work Instauratio Magna.3The use of hidden messages within text, known only by the recipient of the message and its sender.4In general, ciphers are notorious for being complex and very difficult to decode without any grounds on which to begin. However, some cipher such as the Caesar shift cipher5Somewhat similar to the binary language used as mathematical formulae in the design of computers.6Also known as Shake-speare, Shaksper.
