AI helps decode a 217-year-old message sent on Napoleon’s orders

A 217-year-old military message sent on Napoleon’s orders has been deciphered using artificial intelligence by engineer Carter Church. The letter, from the headquarters of Napoleon’s stepson Eugène de Beauharnais to General Auguste de Marmont in Dalmatia (present-day Croatia), detailed French and allied troop positions and urged Marmont not to be intimidated by his isolation. Church worked from a single scan published in a 1969 French military journal, which contained 24 rows of numbers, letters, and symbols beneath one readable line. Building on earlier work that identified 33 characters, the AI transcribed the message and tested possible meanings against French language patterns, taking about six hours. Church published the transcription, code tables, and scripts for reproduction. Cipher researcher Satoshi Tomokiyo reviewed and marked the solution as solved. Church noted that the cipher was not beyond human experts but that AI automated the painstaking tasks of reading, organizing, and decoding symbols, which might otherwise remain undone.

(Source：Goodnewsdigest App)