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Two non-cryptographic cryptograms from 1970

Von / 13. November 2020 / 2 Kommentare
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Here are two sequences of letters or symbols that look like encrypted messages, but are not. Can you guess what their real meaning is?

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A few weeks ago, my friend Richard SantaColoma …

Source: Schmeh

… from New York State informed me about a strange code from 1970 he had come across.

 

The timmermärken code

The code Rich found can be seen on this sheet:

This sequence of symbols looks like an encrypted message or like an encryption key. However, Rich soon found out that these glyphs were not cryptographic in nature. Can a reader guess what these symbols were used for? The solution is given below.

 

The video clip code

When I recently watched a rock music video on YouTube (it happens to be from 1970, too), I saw another strange code:

Source: YouTube

Again, I was reminded of an encrypted message, but again, it soon became clear to me that this code has nothing to do with cryptography. Does a reader know what it is? The soution is given below.

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Solutions

The timmermärken code

Rich discovered the said sequence of symbols on a 1970 Swedish stamp sheet which commemorates the craft of “log rolling”:

Source: Swedish Post

The various lumber companies in Sweden had trademarks which were put at the end of the log to identify their own lumber during the log float downriver. At the bottom of the river, the logs would be separated and sent to the lumber mill they belonged to. The symbols in question (known as “timmermarken” or “flottningsmärke”) identified the owner company.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The table on the stamp sheet represents a collection of these symbols.

The video clip code

I saw the said code in the video clip of the song “Indiana Wants Me” by R Dean Taylor (as a coincidence, this song was published in the same year as the Swedish stamp):

In the video, the words “fingerprint classification” can be read before the code. As can be read on Wikipedia, in the pre-computer age, there were several methods to classify fingerprints in order to facilitate their comparison. Without such a system, it would have been nearly impossibly to find the fingerprint of a certain person in a large collection.

The code that can be seen in the video is probably the representation of a fingerprint in the Henry Classification System.


Further reading: A Cold War crypto history mystery

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Kommentare (2)

  2. #2 Richard SantaColoma
    http://proto57.wordpress.com/
    15. November 2020

    I find it interesting that two sets of symbols are used for each logging company… a more elaborate graphic, along with a simpler one.

    Since the elaborate ones would need a more sophisticated stamp, perhaps the simpler ones, with no curved lines, were meant for situations in which those stamps were not available… so that any flat chisel or maybe a knife could be used.

    A couple of the symbol pairs match really well, like the double arrow in the lower left corner, and the “bowtie” three rows down in the middle. But most do not… and are either letters (presumably the company abbreviation), or a seemingly unrelated graphic representation. That is, unless some of these are runes, or some other symbols?