Early in 1918, however, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, becoming interested in the solution of this apparently insoluble problem, produced a device whereby a message could be transmitted over a wire in such a form that it was absolutely indecipherable to any one save the person for whom it was intended. As originally developed, this system was unable to do all that was claimed for it, but, thanks to the co-operation of the Signal Corps, there was finally produced an electrical device which will transform an ordinary message into cipher, transmit it with absolute secrecy, and decode it at the other end—all at the rate of from forty to seventy words a minute. This may be said to be the only cipher in existence which is absolutely indecipherable and at the same time practicable. As universal peace is not yet within sight, even with the aid of a telescope, and as this invention would prove of incalculable value to the United States in the event of our again becoming involved in war, it is obviously out of the question to discuss the principle on which it is based, much less the details of its construction and operation. It is enough to say that this nation is now the possessor of a system of code transmission which can defy all the experts in the world, a message sent by its means being absolutely indecipherable to the inventor himself. Though before the signing of the Armistice this device was operating between several points in the United States with complete satisfaction, the apparatus could not be manufactured in time to permit of its use overseas before the end of the war. The engineers of the Signal Corps assert that this device will eventually be perfected to a degree of commercial practicability which will make it possible to transmit cipher messages over cables as well as land lines without the necessity of manual transmission and without the use of a recorder. As the machine codes and decodes messages automatically, the large code-room forces which were used in Washington during the war, and which are employed by many of the great banking and commercial institutions, would no longer be required, thus doing away entirely with the labor at present involved in coding and decoding messages and cutting down the time required for their transmission by many hours. II “ESSAYONS”