Coded Message Sent to Thomas Jefferson Finally Cracked

A coded message sent to President Thomas Jefferson in 1801 as a challenge between friends has finally been cracked by a scientist using educated guesses and a bit of computing power.

The message was sent to Jefferson by Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor in Philadelphia. The two men shared a keen interest in codes and ciphers, and Patterson's message, in a code he had devised, was never deciphered by Jefferson.

Patterson deemed his new code nearly flawless, but a mathematician at Princeton eventually found a way to read what Patterson wrote to his friend. And the message, it turns out, was a passage that Jefferson, along with most history lovers, would have recognized.

Image: Thomas Jefferson/courtesy Library of Congress