Cracking Codes

If you don't have a magic decoder ring, cracking a code can be difficult, some more so than others. It's pretty hard to solve a code when the person who designed the code is long dead, and the you don't even know what the original language might be. Yet the right person with the right skills can do it. In this video, we learn the stories behind nine famous codes that were once considered unbreakable intul someone figured them out. They include the Enigma code, Linear B, the Purple code, the Vigenère cipher, the Zodiac killer's cryptograms, the Copiale cipher, the Voynich manuscript, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's letters, and Edgar Allan Poe's ciphers, which turned out to be the least important of them all.