Things – Nick Farr Created a Polyalphabetic Substitution Cypher Slide Rule from Bre Pettis on Vimeo.
I’ve been spending way, way too much time at our fellow Hackerspace NYCResistor. Fortunately, I’ve done some things other than heading out into Midtown Manhattan at 3 AM to make some cardboard cutouts and eating some of the world’s best waffles at Veselka.
This PASCSR was inspired by Bre Pettis and Maximka, both NYC Resistor members. Bre thought a slide rule would be cool, and Max was…well, the only person I know of in NYC who actually has real life experience with slide rules.
Regular slide rules are…well, not that exciting. Crypto on the other hand, now there’s something we can get into. As it turns out, they used slide rules pretty extensively for Polyalphabetic Substitution Cyphers! The design was based loosely on the P185 Engineering Instruments Codemaker, but the concept was used throughout WWI and WWII to send coded messages.
Thanks to NYCR’s lazzzer, the design came out really well on plain ‘ol black acrylic lying around their shop. You can make your own! Just download the design from Thingiverse and you can fabricate it yourself on a CNC, your own laser cutter, send it out to a laser etching shop or cut it out yourself out of some balsa wood.
The PASCSR is but one of many things in the Thingiverse, a growing community of DIY makers who are creating lots of rapid prototype DIY designs. While this might be HacDC’s first contribution, it most certainly won’t be its last. And one of these days, we’ll be getting our own Lazzzer…
COMING SOON: Enigma decoder rings you can wear on your fingers.
