need help understanding

[snowqueen]

ok, not a computer geek...so I figured one of you could help me figure this out. I've read about Francis Bacon's Bilateral Ciphers...still can't make heads or tails out of them. I need to understand them and more specifically, a Bacon cipher with regular letters and Roman numerals involved. Is there anyone out there who can explain it to me in layman's terms?? Many thanks and I'll keep the java hot. SnowQueen

[Jerry Ochs]

Dear SQ

I clipped this from the Internet. Maybe it's a start.

Bacon was known to have invented and used a "bilateral cipher" which
used two different typefaces in each message. Each set of five letters
in the printed text represented one letter in the coded message. Using
capital and lowercase letters, for example, "Aaaa" might stand for
"a," "aAaaa" might be "b," and "aaAaa" might be "c" ... on through
"aAaAA" as "x," "aaAAA" as "y," and "AAAAa" as "z."

In actual use, the cipher could be relatively subtle. The first line
of "Macbeth" - "When shall we three meet again?" - could be printed in
a combination of regular and italic letters to spell any five-letter
encoded name, such as "Elvis."