Jefferson Wheel Cipher

Jefferson's encryption uses a cylinder of several vertical rotating wheels. Each of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet are randomly written on the edge of each wheel.

There are several versions of the cylinder, each with a different alphabet number (between 10 and 25), and different alphabets all in a possibly modifiable order.

Example: The original configuration uses this series of 25 alphabets whose 17th begins with ARMYOFTHEUS (imagine each line as a vertical wheel):

To write a message, the author turns the wheels and aligns the letters to make a line.

The encrypted message consists of any other cylinder line (usually the top line or the bottom line). If there are not enough wheels, encrypt the beginning of the message normally and start over / continue with the remaining letters.

Example: Code JEFFERSON with the cylinder described below. Locate the first letter J on the first wheel 1 ABCEIGDJFVUYMHTQKZOLRXSPWN and take the letter directly below (here beside) or F. Continue with the Nth letter and the Nth wheel. The encrypted message is: FHYGMNYBL

The Jefferson Wheel decryption requires knowing the configuration of the cylinder of the transmitter in order to perform a decryption.

Position the letters of the encrypted message on the wheels and read the line directly (or directly above depending on how the coding was done)

Example: Decode the message WWPATYZSZ by locating the Nth letter on the Nth wheel (using the configuration described above). W on the wheel 1 ABCEIGDJFVUYMHTQKZOLRXSPWN is preceded by the letter P, and so on. The plain message is PRESIDENT.

The message has a low coincidence score (0.04) due to the use of multiple alphabets.

In its usual versions, the message contains only letters.

Jefferson's cylinder is often confused with the cryptex popularized by the novel Da Vinci Code.

Without being a variant, the cylinder can have multiple configurations, in number of wheels and according to their order. A wheel rotation key can be used to complicate the decryption.

The invention of the cylinder by Thomas Jefferson is estimated in 1793.