The Fractional Cipher
Published in
2 min readDec 27, 2019
Morse code has a bit of a problem, as we need to insert a small pause between the letters, and between the words. In its standard form it is made up of dots and dashes:
Standard Morse codeE . S ... H .... B -... 1 .---- period .-.-.-
T - U ..- V ...- X-..- 2 ..--- comma --..--
I .. R .-. F ..-. C-.-. 3 ...-- query .-.-.-
A .- W .-- L .-.. Y --.- 4 ....- colon ---...
N -. D -.. P .--. Z --.. 5 ..... s/colon -.-.-.
M -- K -.- J .--- Q --.- 6 -.... dash -....-
G --. 7 --... slash -..-.
O --- 8 ---.. equals -...-
9 ----.
0 -----
For example, “Hello World” is:
.... . .-.. .-.. --- / .-- --- .-. .-.. -..
H E L L O SPACE W O R L D
With a fractional cipher, we can then make this into a string with an ‘x’ between characters. For “Peter Piper picked”, we get:
For "Peter piper picked " we get:.--.x.x-x.x.-.xx.--.x..x.--.x.x.-.xx.--.x..x-.-.x-.-x.x-..xx
P e t e r ' ' p i p e r' ' p i c k e d ' '
So let’s take an example of “Hello world”:
Plain text: H e l l o w o r l d
Morse string…