Originally Posted by
GAtkins
Thank you. Makes sense....I worked at furniture store a hundred years ago when I was a kid and all the prices were hand marked on a hang-tag. Our cost on a particular item was written as "Don't be lazy", corresponding to 1 through zero, respectively. So if our cost on some item was $195, our cost would be coded as DZB on the tag. This allowed us to negotiate on various items within certain limits. Pretty clever I thought.
Glenn
We did something similar in the Navy when we wanted to broadcast coordinates over the radio but couldn't use an encrypted channel - We'd use a ten-letter word with no repeated letters, with each letter representing 1 through 0. Not really "secure" in any meaningful sense of the word, but it was good enough for training flights.
The Hasselblad camera company uses that scheme for the date codes on its cameras and film magazines, too. "VHPICTURES" (For "Victor Hasselblad Pictures") translates to 1234567890. Kodak did the same thing for its lenses and camera bodies for a while too, using CAMEROSITY as the code word.