Different ways to send messages

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STEGANOGRAPHY: This refers to the secret communication achieved by hiding the exsitence of a message.   It stems from the Greek words stegano which means "covered", and graphein which means "to write".

  1. Scrapping the wax off a pair of wooden folding tablets, writing on the wood underneath and then covering the message over with wax again.
  2. Shaving ones head, writing the message on the scalp, then allowing the hair to grow back.  This allows the person to walk to anywhere and carry the message without having anyone intercept it.
  3. Writing messages on fine silk, which is then scrunched into a tiny ball and covered in wax.  The message is swallowed by the messenger to transport the message to whoever needs it (this was preformed mostly by the ancient Chinese).
  4. Making ink from a mixture of one ounce of alum and a pint of vinegar and writing the message on a hard boiled egg. The soultion will penatrate through the pores of the shell and leave the message on the surface of the hard-boiled egg so that when the egg is pealed the message can be read.(This would be a great project for the students to try!)
  5. Using the milky fluid from a thithymallus plant as an invisable ink.  Once this fluid is heated up the fluid with turn brown which makes the message visable to see!(this to would be a great experiment for the students to try!)

CRYPTOGRAPHY: This refers to not hidding the existence of a message, but hidding it's meaning, which is a process called encryption.  What this means is that the message is scrambled with a code that only the sender and reciever know.  This code, when used will unscrambel the message so that it can be read.

  1. Caesars Cypher is a perfect example of this.  Caesar came up with a specific way to scramble his messages where the letters in the message were shifted three places in the alphabet. Example: Dog in plaintext would be Grj in the cyphered text.