The 26 letters of the Latin/English alphabet do not fit in a 5 × 5 square, two letters must be combined (usually I and J as above, though C and K is an alternative). With the modern Latin alphabet, this is the typical form: 1Įach letter is then represented by its coordinates in the grid. The original square used the Greek alphabet laid out as follows: 1 Letters are represented by two numbers from one to five, allowing the representation of 25 characters using only 5 numeric symbols. There are no surviving tablets from antiquity. The device partitioned the alphabet into five tablets with five letters each (except for the last one with only four). ContentsĪccording to Polybius' Histories, the device was invented by Cleoxenus and Democleitus, and further developed by Polybius himself. The device was originally used for fire signalling, allowing for the coded transmission of any message, not just a finite amount of predetermined options as was the convention before. The device is used for fractionating plaintext characters so that they can be represented by a smaller set of symbols, which is useful for telegraphy, steganography, and cryptography. The Polybius square, also known as the Polybius checkerboard, is a device invented by the ancient Greeks Cleoxenus and Democleitus, and made famous by the historian and scholar Polybius. Type of code The Greek letters of a Polybius square
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