Talk:Tap code

Origin?

If it was featured in a 1941 book, then it was reinvented or something in 1965.
—wwoods 18:21, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

David Kahn's classic "The Codebreakers" mentions Cyrillic-based versions of this cipher as being used in Czarist jails, so obviously it was not invented for the first time in 1965. Maybe its use among American POWs in Vietnam first happened in 1965... AnonMoos (talk) 20:46, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've reworked the article to indicate the above. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Other tap codes

[moved here from a user talk page]

I understand your motivation for removing the 'optimization' section. But I have a different view on the subject "tap code": A tap code for me is a way to communicate by tapping with a finger on a table. When I think about a tap code, I am not interested in war, prison, military or in fact history at all. All I want to know is, which tap codes are conceivable, what their advantages and disadvantages are, and how they work. In your view, there exists one single tap code, in analogy to the one single Morse code. But the tap code is not called Smitty code or named after anybody at all. So the name "tap code" refers to the specific means this code is transported, i.e. by tapping. As interesting as the use of tap codes throughout history is, it is not everything to say about them. And in my view, Wikipedia should reflect all views on a subject, not only the historical one.

The motivation for simply filling the alphabet in a 5x5 square, is, because it is easy to teach it to a fellow prisoner. But what if someone wants to use a tap code outside of prison? What if he or she has time to learn a more sophisticated code? The efficiency is the main motivation then, and it is a nice exercise to think about tap codes that work and are more efficient than the standard one. 129.69.65.164 (talk) 13:33, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What you are thinking about is great from an intellectual viewpoint, but is not allowed in Wikipedia per its WP:No original research rule. Wasted Time R (talk) 14:36, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes...how dare anyone try to make Wikipedia credible and consistent? The Automobile entry should be entirely about the Model T, and the Equation entry can't cover anything but the Quadratric equation, else it's original research, according to Wasted Time R! Sheesh...and some people wonder why Wikipedia remains a joke! 68.83.72.162 (talk) 13:57, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your analogies aren't apt. Wasted Time R (talk) 14:05, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ciphers which use a Straddling checkerboard (like the Russian "SNEGOPAD" cipher discussed in Kahn's Codebreakers) are a way of encoding alphabets into two numbers with greater efficiency than a simple square matrix, but I don't know that they've ever been used with tap codes... AnonMoos (talk) 13:55, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The prison context tap code has to be simple to teach, simple to learn, simple to use. It's expected that the prison guard population doesn't have any codebreakers among them. Wasted Time R (talk) 14:05, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Trivia section?

I wonder if it's worth mentioning that (at least the MSX version of) Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake features the same tap codes with numbers added to it in several occasions (you have to find out at least two radio frequencies with them). They are even included in the manual: http://www.msxnet.org/gtinter/Operate2.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rautasydan (talk • contribs) 18:26, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]