The telegram is from President Abraham Lincoln, but the words sound insane.
"What's next news I the prayers I to while coming star what you mean dispatch Zebra."
Of course, the message is in code and to read it you need the code book.
Unexpectedly, a wealth of messages and code books once thought lost have been found. Now a museum is teaming up with a North Carolina State University and Zooniverse.org to crowdsource the decoding of more than 5,400 telegrams (100 sent by Lincoln) using the newly found code books.
Anyone can register with Zooniverse to help in the process.
The code books and telegrams came to light in 2009 when they were offered for auction by the descendants of the director of the Union military telegraph office.
Thomas T. Eckert (1825-1910) retired in 1867 and took with him ledger books, correspondence and code books. Evidently no one thought anything about it at the time, and no one cared since. The materials were sold once in 2009 for $36,000 and offered for sale again in 2012, at which time the historical importance of the materials was at last recognized, according to the Wall Street Journal.
0816-152.txtx
