Ciphers for the little folks

In Short

Published in 1916 by the Riverbank Laboratories, this early-childhood educational manual adapts Sir Francis Bacon's 16th-century biliteral cipher into interactive primary school lessons. Through hands-on activities like weaving mats, bead stringing, symbolic designs, and clock-reading, children learn basic skills while training their eyes to recognize fine differences in form. The book concludes with a brief, illustrated history of the alphabet and typography, demonstrating how subtle variation in letterforms can conceal hidden messages in plain text. It survives as a curious, charming artifact of early 20th-century pedagogy and cryptology.

The Story

The book opens with a pedagogical philosophy: young children learn best when engaging their hands in constructive play rather than absorbing passive adult instruction. To facilitate this, the manual introduces Sir Francis Bacon’s biliteral cipher, a binary system where any two distinct states—designated as "a" and "b"—can be arranged in groups of five to represent 24 letters of the alphabet.

The initial lesson lays out the mathematical key, demonstrating how five-part combinations of alternating red and blue markers systematically build the code. From this foundation, the manual presents a sequence of fifteen practical exercises that gradually increase in complexity. Simple tasks involve short and long lines on sewing cards, light and dark squares on weaving mats, or colored stick arrangements spelling words like "sunset." The tasks soon shift to pictorial designs, where mother hens represent "b" forms and little chicks represent "a" forms to spell out "egg."

As the exercises progress, the cipher integrates into functional learning tools. A sixty-dot educational clock allows children to spell out phrases like "five past four" in secret code before setting the clock's physical hands. Threading square and round beads onto laces creates "cipher necklaces," introducing the concept of double-steganography by encoding one message using bead shape and a second using bead color.

The manual then moves from physical objects to graphic design. It demonstrates how red and blue circular patterns can map cipher phrases like "United States" onto architectural sketches or spell out "Sir Francis Bacon" within the geometric contours of the word "CIPHER." The final exercises introduce typographic variations, using capital letters for "a" and small letters for "b" to embed hidden keys inside visible phrases.

An appendix titled "The Story of the Alphabet" shifts to historical narrative. It traces human writing from Egyptian hieroglyphics—described as picture writing carved on stone and papyrus—to Phoenician trade signs, Greek adaptations, and Roman letters. It tracks the evolution of European script through medieval sheepskin manuscripts and Gutenberg's invention of moveable blackletter type. The narrative describes the historic typographic rivalry between Roman, Gothic, and Italic fonts, culminating in Albert Dürer’s geometric formulas for proportional Roman lettering and Francisco Lucas’s dual letterforms ("doubles"). The book concludes by demonstrating how these historical typographical variations allow modern writers to conceal complete hidden stories within normal printed books, providing a physical "Classifier" template to help the reader decipher a poem by Shakespeare.

How It Unfolds

The foundation is laid The text establishes that two alternating choices, grouped in sets of five, yield thirty-two distinct combinations capable of representing the entire alphabet. Teachers are given the foundational code key, using alternating red and blue markers in mathematical patterns to map out every letter.

Learning through hands-on play Children apply the binary code through tactile crafts, using short and long lines on sewing cards, light and dark woven squares, and colored stick patterns. Symbolic designs emerge, encoding words like "sunset" and "sat on a wall" into basic pictures.

Integrating daily practical skills The exercises turn to functional tools, using a sixty-dot clock face to spell out time-related phrases in cipher before moving the mechanical hands. Bead necklaces introduce layered encryption, hiding two independent messages simultaneously by using bead shapes for the first code and bead colors for the second.

Connecting ciphers to design and history The book transitions to typography and architectural layout, showing how letterforms and brickwork patterns can hide names like "Sir Francis Bacon." A historical appendix tracks the evolution of writing from Egyptian picture-carvings and Greek signs to Roman type and Albrecht Dürer’s geometric alphabet formulas.

Unlocking the secret text The work culminates in typographical steganography, showing how artists created subtle dual letterforms to hide communications in plain sight. Readers receive a cutout tool to analyze tiny variations in an Italic Shakespeare poem and extract its secret message.

The People

The book focuses on historical figures, instructors, and the young learner:

• Sir Francis Bacon: The 16th-century philosopher and statesman whose original biliteral cipher forms the conceptual heart of the entire book. His historical system proves that any perceptual difference—sound, motion, shape, or color—can convey complex thought.
• The Child ("Little Folks"): The intended primary recipient of the method. The child seeks engaging, tactile play, operating best through handwork, block-building, and observation rather than rote memorization. Through these lessons, the child's observational faculties are systematically sharpened.
• The Instructor (Teacher or Parent): The guiding facilitator responsible for adapting, lengthening, or restructuring the exercises to fit the pupil. The instructor converts cipher games into foundational reading, writing, and time-telling skills.
• Albert Dürer: The famous German master artist highlighted in the historical appendix. Driven by precision, he calculates the exact mathematical rules, squares, and circles needed to design harmonious Gothic and Roman alphabets.
• Francisco Lucas: A Spanish artist whose historical creation of "doubles"—nearly identical pairs of printed letters—demonstrates how subtle typographic variations can securely conceal secret text within printed books.

In Its Own Voice

Before introducing the code, the manual emphasizes that visual observation is a trained skill rather than an innate ability:

In the same way the townsman will stare straight at a grouse in the heather, or a trout poised above the gravel in the brook, and will not see them; not because they are too small, but because he does not know what they look like in those positions.

In the appendix, the text addresses the child directly to highlight the sheer impact of the alphabet:

It is a more wonderful thing, a great many people think, than the invention of steamboats and steamcars, or of airships and submarines.

Explaining the hidden mechanics of type, the narrative shows how secret communications hide in ordinary sentences:

The phrase "Biliteral Cipher" is made to contain the hidden word "key" by the use of a capital letter for the a form, and a small letter for the b form.

What It's Really About

At its core, the book explores the deep relationship between observation, binary logic, and human communication. It argues that true education does not consist of forcing adult knowledge onto children, but of training the senses—specifically the eye—to recognize subtle structural patterns in the world around them.

Underneath its simple craft projects lies a profound cryptological insight: information is independent of its physical medium. Whether expressed through colored beads, short lines, mother hens and chicks, architectural bricks, or minute variations in printed font, any perceptual contrast can encode meaning. By coupling primary education with Francis Bacon's binary code, the book asserts that learning to read language and learning to decipher hidden patterns are fundamentally the exact same mental discipline.

Why Read It Today

Ciphers for the Little Folks is a charming, unusual artifact for readers interested in early childhood education, typography, and historical cryptography. It offers a rare glimpse into the educational experiments conducted at George Fabyan’s famous Riverbank Laboratories during the First World War era. Reading it feels like stumbling upon a vintage Montessori curriculum designed by a master codebreaker.

The prose is clear, warm, and remarkably accessible, written with the gentle patience of an early 20th-century kindergarten director. The narrative moves swiftly from basic primary crafts to fascinating historical details regarding Renaissance printing press rivalries and Albrecht Dürer's geometric letter designs.

While modern readers will easily navigate the text, they should be prepared for its historical period quirks: the book takes for granted early 20th-century theories on Francis Bacon's ciphers, and its appendix presents simplified, sweeping historical narratives typical of children's literature from 1916. Nevertheless, its clever combination of hands-on paper crafts, visual puzzles, and printable decoder templates makes it an delightful, engaging curiosity for teachers, puzzle enthusiasts, and book-history buffs alike.

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