Episode 37: Katherine Ellison
John Twork 0:09
Welcome to Redbird Buzz. I'm John Twork from University Marketing and Communications. Our guest today is Dr. Katherine Ellison, a professor and share of English here at Illinois State University. Ellison holds a Ph.D. in 18th-century literature from Emory University, and she's received numerous teaching and research awards during her 18-year tenure here at Illinois State. Ellison’s research expertise is in 17th and 18th-century British literature and culture, and something a bit more cryptic. The history of secret writings or cryptography, which we'll attempt to decipher today, you can also read more about Ellison and this spring's issue of Redbird Scholar magazine.
And it's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Katherine Ellison to Redbird Buzz. What's the word, Redbird? Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up here at Illinois State nearly two decades ago.
Katherine Ellison 1:13
Hi, thanks for having me. Well, I'm from the Midwest, I got my bachelor's degree from IUPUI, which no longer exists, I heard and, and then worked on my master’s and Ph.D. at Emory where, as you noted, I was studying 17th and 18th-century literature and the job ad came up for here at ISU, it's only a few hours from my family. And it was the perfect position for me, as a first-generation college student. I love the student body here. I love the location and everything that's happening in our English department, which has an English studies model. So, it lets me be interdisciplinary and do all these wild things.
John Twork 1:55
Yeah, you have some really interesting and diverse areas of study. What we're going to focus on today is the history of secret writing. So, tell us what is a cipher? And how is that different from a code.
Katherine Ellison 2:10
Right, and these are terms that sometimes you see used interchangeably. But a code is more of a one-on-one correspondence, a code usually means that you need a code book, something written down where, you know, King Charles is number 113. And so, you'll see a lot of the old correspondence of the 17th and 18th centuries that we're using codes. And often there's a code book found like recently for Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, best known for those novels, who used codes, but ciphers are algorithmic, ciphers don't have something written down that makes them less secure. They operate based on a set of instructions that are agreed upon between the correspondence. So, it might be a very simple kind of step, like, just use this for this, and then everything will work in what you're reading. Or it could be very elaborate, with many steps like Samuel Moreland, in 1666 invents a highly elaborate cipher, that would be difficult for someone to remember. But if they do, it's pretty unbreakable. Yeah.
John Twork 3:22
It's interesting to me that you as a professor of English, someone who studied English, your whole life end up in this field, this seems almost more like something like criminology maybe. And maybe there are scholars in that field that study this as well. But how did you enter this field of studying ciphers?
Katherine Ellison 3:41
Well, I mean, first of all, every language is a cipher until you know it. Anything that you're not sure how to read. And so, there's always a process of figuring out what word does that connect to in the language that I know. How does the grammar work? So really, I mean, language begins as cipher in a sense, and so that's a natural connection to what we do in English, which is really all about a deeper understanding of how the English language works and how all languages work and how they're connected. Historically. The way that I became interested in cryptography was really through a year-long fellowship I had at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, and I was there doing research on secretaries. So, I had discovered that a number of the authors that we kind of know and think about, like Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, their day job was as a secretary for some famous politician. And what a secretary does is manage secrets. That's what the term means. And so, I was looking for some more information on this other career that they had. And I kept running into ciphered writings, and it's kind of a roadblock. When you do that, as a scholar, you're like, I can't read this. What do I do? And so that required, you know, learning about what ciphers were, what they were like at that point in history, and then how to read them.
John Twork 5:21
And some of your research deals with how literacy is connected to cryptography. And particularly as you're looking at literacy in the 17th and 18th centuries. Can you talk about that? And what that connection, what that connection is?
Katherine Ellison 5:39
Yeah, I definitely, you know, I found that a number of the cryptographers of the 17th and early 18th century were really just discovering new ways of reading. And they were making their audience which was really a very broad audience. So, they weren't writing only for politicians, they were in military strategists, and they were really writing for the general public. And they were educating them about how to break down a language and become literate in more than just an alphabetic way. And so, one of the things I find that they challenge us to realize is that reading is tactile, reading is oral reading requires that you notice the entire graphic field of what you're looking at. You know, there's so much we do when we read that we just do unconsciously, like we go ahead and figure out oh, this is the size of the book, therefore, this is probably what this is, this book is going to be doing. We have a table of contents and indexes, and all these things that give us clues that we've just kind of internalized. And so, the cryptographers sort of lay all that out bear to make us more conscious that we're even doing that, like we're decoding all the time. And so, in doing that, they sort of changed what the culture thought about literacy. And, and it becomes some say people developed a kind of cryptographic imagination, the ability to see everything is potentially a cipher of some kind, some everything has another meaning potentially.
John Twork 7:16
So, it's its own language, in a sense, using elements of learning of English or whatever language one is familiar with him.
Katherine Ellison 7:24
You can create new languages that only you and one other person might know how to understand. Yeah. And that was very exciting, even for the general public. So, it becomes very popular as a kind of pastime, to maybe just write ciphers back and forth to one another.
John Twork 7:41
I didn't realize that the origin of Secretary was a secret keeper. That's a secret. It's fascinating.
Katherine Ellison 7:48
I prefer that term to over Administrative Professional, because I think that's kind of cool.
John Twork 7:53
Absolutely. Yeah, much cooler. What kind of secrets were they managing?
Katherine Ellison 8:00
Well, I mean, in the case of Daniel Defoe, I mean, he was working as a secret agent for Robert Hurley. So Robert Hurley, and he was trying to orchestrate the union of Scotland, with England, and so he was in disguise while he's out there, and he's sending these in his case codes, not ciphers. He's sending these coded letters back and forth to Harley giving him information about other Scots ready. Do we think this union is going to work? What could he do to help facilitate that? So, you've got, you've got him doing that you've got King Charles the First, who, you know, is overthrown and decapitated in the end. But while he was on the run, he sent coded messages back and forth to his wife, Queen Henrietta to his lovers to his strategists. And then all of those actually got confiscated, and then published, which was humiliating for him and completely changed the way England thought about the throne. Hmm. So instead of the King being a god figure, they now saw he was perfectly human, flawed, you know, person, and that just changes the way they think about the throne from there on out. So, it had huge implications. Historically.
John Twork 9:22
Can you talk a little bit more about so there are presumably all sorts of scholars studying ciphers and cryptic writing secret writing. You particularly have collaborated with Dr. Susan Kim, a colleague in the Department of English. How has your research been distinguished from other areas of expertise that other scholars are studying?
Katherine Ellison 9:46
Well, working with Susan has been so amazing. Susan is our medievalist, and so of course, you know, ciphered and coated writing goes back all the way to the beginning of writing and so she's just looking at these really cool artifacts like the Frank's casket, which has some runes on it, it also has Latin, it's depicting several different religious scenes at the same time, it's just a little box. And so, talking with her got us very excited about collaborating to just give everyone a much broader picture of cryptography over time. And so, you know, she's really able to look at those earlier periods. And I'm able to kind of take over as we get toward the 16th, through the 17th and 18th centuries, and see how ciphering remained the same and how it changed. And she finds too, that it impacts literacy in that earlier period, as well. And then from there, you know, as we're looking in archives, we start discovering figures like John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert, who were faculty in the English department at the University of Chicago. They began using their skills as literary scholars to work during World War One, in encryption in what will become the military intelligence, division, and eventually, the NSA. And so yeah, they were just using those skills of reading in a different way, and bringing their historical knowledge to, you know, to use in during the war. So, we got excited, and we did a whole book on those two. So, our collaboration was about their collaboration.
John Twork 11:34
Sure, yeah. Fascinating. And you're saying that, basically, is as old as languages, you go all the way back? People were trying to find a way to make language secretive. Is that right?
Katherine Ellison 11:47
Yeah, absolutely. Uh, you know, I mean, what's been published is only a fraction of what's been written in our human history. And some of that is just hasn't been published. But a lot of it also, if we didn't want it to be published, so diaries, and journals, and letters are some of the big genres where you find ciphers, love letters, especially, like in the case of King Charles The First, he has mistresses. So, he communicates differently with them than he does with his wife.
John Twork 12:22
And another aspect of this is how cross-disciplinary this research can be. Can you talk a little bit about how you maybe can use some of these secret writings to study other areas of the humanities?
Katherine Ellison 12:37
I mean, of course, studying secret writing is already so interdisciplinary, you have to know your historical context, you have to know what's happening in politics, and government at the at that time, you have to know what's happening economically. And so many of these early cryptographers were also scientists. And you know, you have figures like Robert Boyle, who is writing down his discoveries and cipher because he didn't want anyone to steal them. And so, you have to know a bit about science at the time, and really just all of cultural, cultural history. So, you know, it has an impact in these fields. Because, you know, if we can, if we have more access to some of the ciphered writings and some more tools for deciphering them, then there might be some archives that were kind of like for me, a roadblock that opens up and you're able to see more of what was happening in those contexts.
John Twork 13:41
Are you a skilled cipher reader?
Katherine Ellison 13:44
I've become pretty skilled at historical ciphers. So, I'm not working in modern information security. I'm learning about authentication and keys and all that cool stuff they're doing over there probably in our cybersecurity program. But yeah, I've read everything that I could find on cryptography across several centuries. And a number of those have really cool methods, lots of different creative things that they were inventing. And that helps, then when you run across something in the archives, I've been able to read quite a few things. And now there's a whole database out there that's being started called decrypt. So that scholars when they run into something, can upload it to the database, and, and they're going to have tools in there to help you decrypt as well. But yeah, I've definitely gotten more skilled at reading things. And the more you, the more of them you've seen, the more you're like Oh, I bet this is this particular kind of cipher and you can try things out and it's a puzzle. It's fun
John Twork 14:59
I was gonna It seems like it's almost like a like set of puzzles, but also sort of is there an algorithm a math kind of algorithm to it that you start to notice through experience? I mean, is this sort of using a different side of your brain than maybe you had planned on when you became an English scholar?
Katherine Ellison 15:19
Yes, absolutely. And I mean, I always love math, I was always good at math. And so, I definitely put those skills to use because there's a lot of pattern recognition, work that goes into it, there's a lot of probability, you have to know things like how common the occurrence of certain letters of the alphabet is, that helps you and there are some kind of grids that you create. And you can see even when someone like John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert, they, their notes are in the University of Chicago, at least Manly's are, and you can see him working through his creating little charts of, there's this many instances of this character, that's probably an eye, you know, and he's working out his algorithm. And that is really what you do, because you have to think sort of backward in terms of the steps that would have been taken to get to get there, but you do get good at seeing patterns.
John Twork 16:18
I know that in the magazine article the writer Matt Wing mentions that you get emails periodically from folks saying, Hey, can you crack this code? Obviously, ciphers are different from codes. We covered that already. But can you like just give a general example like, what are folks emailing you about? And, you know, are you able to ever help them?
Katherine Ellison 16:41
I mean, if I have time, yeah, I try to look into what someone sends me. I've had a number of requests from folks who've discovered things in their own family, yeah, archives, someone has passed away, they've looked through the estate, and there are some ciphered letters. So, I've been able to help out with a few of those just for their own, not closure, but their kind of excitement about their own family history. So, we've seen that there was a cipher on a gravestone and a descendant wondered what in the world is that? And so, I helped a little bit, it needed some more context that I didn't know, from their family. I'll also get things from, you know, treasure hunters. That that will come they're more treasure hunters out there than I thought there were.
John Twork 17:40
Really? What treasure they hunting for?
Katherine Ellison 17:42
All kinds of things, you know, shipwrecks with gold, you know, down in the down in the sea, there was one where some things have been recovered from a shipwreck. And I was just way too busy to be able to help with that. But I wonder if yeah, if he gets that figured out, that would be fascinating.
John Twork 18:02
Wow. And so certainly, there are examples of ancient secret writings and more modern ones, too, who utilize secret writings now, are folks still utilizing ciphers to write and communicate,
Katherine Ellison 18:19
I would argue that everything we do now is ciphered. I mean, when we are typing on our keyboards, we see only one layer of that, and that all that is encrypted, and is in you know, computer language, we know that an algorithm is formed based on everything that we take a look at on Facebook, or social media, and those algorithms are ciphers, you know, and those are all coming together and locating patterns in us. And then giving us information that it thinks that we want. When we search for something, a message is being sent about who we are, whether we kind of want it to be or not. So, I feel like ciphering really has infiltrated almost everything in our culture. And it's good to be aware of its history, and where it comes from, and the fact that it impacts literacy. And that is exactly what it's doing now to it really is changing how we do things and how we read.
John Twork 19:24
We're all part of a cipher. It's kind of scary to think about, but so, so true. You've touched on some of the famous examples of ciphered communication. Can you talk about some others, you know, one that comes to mind is the Zodiac Killer. There was a cipher that I think was, you know, just finally sort of decoded just a few years ago from that, but that one and maybe some others that, you know, have come to light in pop culture.
Katherine Ellison 19:54
Oh, that's a good question. I don't know that I can think of any recent ciphers I know, you know, I have three teenage sons. And they've mentioned that in things like their video games. There are what I would call ciphers, in some cases, some things that they need to figure out. And they might have the, what is that called? The cheat code? Like cheat codes are kind of fascinating. And we know that different you know, populations communicate with one another using codes and ciphers and maybe gestures. If you're in a particular, yeah, if you're in a particular group, and you want that secret language, so secret languages are being used. Just constantly. And are necessary.
John Twork 20:46
Yeah, yeah. Even I think fraternities and sororities have that. And you know, so they'll do secret handshakes. It's all a cipher. Fascinating. Can you talk a little bit about the Baconian theory of Shakespeare authorship this is this is something that I believe you spoke about in your interview with Matt, and I think it didn't make the article. But he said that I should ask you about it. So. So can you talk a little bit about that, and how that relates to ciphers? It sounds really interesting.
Katherine Ellison 21:20
Well, from at least the beginning of the 19th century, there was a theory that you know, William Shakespeare didn't exist. It’s not possible that a sort of lower-middle-class figure could have been this brilliant. And that continues through the rest of the century with periodic figures who would get really obsessed with this, up through the beginning of the 20th century. This very, this millionaire George Fabyan, open Riverbank Laboratory just up in Geneva, Illinois, he's working on all kinds of things. They're really that's where they know, it's really about tuning forks is some of the cool work that they've done. But he also had this obsession with this idea that Shakespeare didn't exist. And he was going to be the one, who proved it with his team. Because he wasn't a scholar, he was paid for the scholars. Oh, so. So, he hired Elizabeth Wells Gallup and her job was to prove, and she believed the theory that Francis Bacon had actually been the author of all these brilliant plays and that Bacon left clues throughout the plays about his identity. And so, they tried very hard to prove this. They did all kinds of wild things with blowing up letters and saying, Oh, yes, look, this tea is different from that tea. But of course, there were different printing presses. There were all, you know, they were not able to prove anything. They brought in John Matthews Manly, as chair of the English department to authenticate to give some credibility behind it. And he refused. Because he thought it was absolutely ridiculous. So yeah, there have been many attempts to prove, that I think there are still societies out there. There's a Bacon Society. I don't know if they still work with this theory. But yeah, there are still people who would like to believe a Shakespeare didn't exist, but no one has been able to prove anything like that.
John Twork 23:19
To quote, the X-files, the truth is out there. Right. Yeah. You know, speaking of continuing to decipher ciphers, artificial intelligence seems like maybe that would be something that, you know, could potentially help or, or potentially help solve unsolvable ciphers or create really complex ciphers? What's what sort of work is AI doing? And maybe what is the future of cryptography with AI in mind?
Katherine Ellison 23:55
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, there are many things about AI that I'm skeptical about. And as a, you know, member of the English department, where we’re right? We're a little nervous about how to help our students navigate AI. But I think it's exciting when you think about the potential to maybe enter in some of these, these documents that we haven't been able to read, as I'd mentioned, you know, there's a database decrypt, that's been developed. So, will they integrate AI into that? To help? I would imagine that they that they will. And so, there's a lot of there's a lot of potential there. I mean, one snag might be that almost every historical cipher I've run into has errors. So, they're human beings. They're amateurs in most of these cases. And so even Daniel Defoe, you know, some of his stuff is riddled with some mistakes. So, what will ai do with human flaws? Yeah, Right, will it just learn that there are common mistakes that are made? And it'll start moving around those? Or will that? Will that kind of block it from being able to solve some things? I don't know. It'll be. I'm excited to experiment with it and see what comes out.
John Twork 25:19
What's next for your research as we wrap up the interview, is there an aspect of cryptography that you haven't touched on that maybe you'd like to or maybe an area that you'd like to advance in your research that you've already begun?
Katherine Ellison 25:36
Well, I'm trying to put out a collected edition of some of these early cryptography works, the primary document so that scholars don't have to search around in different databases for the historical works, they could just have a text that has all of them together. So that's one project. And another one is I'm going to look more into William Friedman, who's sort of a father of the NSA and, and Elizabeth Smith Friedman, just as much a powerful force behind the development of the NSA. Because she was an English major, and then went on tried to get a job for the Newbery ended up at that Riverbank Laboratory with the millionaire George Fabyan, where she met William, and they got married. And he loved literature and had attempted to write some essays on some literary works that he wasn't able to get published. So, I want to look at a different side of the Friedman’s and different side of William Friedman in particular, and his like, literary side. Because he's only known for cryptography. So, I'm gonna go in the other direction with that project.
John Twork 26:49
So many things connected through cryptography. And it's a fascinating subject. So, thank you for sharing your expertise and we'll definitely continue to follow your research, and my mind has been blown now that I know that we're all living in a secret code, everything's a cipher. That's what I learned today. Thank you so much, Dr. Katherine Ellison for your time. Appreciate it.
Katherine Ellison 27:13
Thank you.
John Twork 27:20
That was Dr. Katherine Ellison Professor and Chair of English at Illinois State University. You can read more about Ellison and the history of secret writings in this spring's issue of Redbird Scholar magazine. Thanks for listening to Redbird Buzz and be sure to tune in next time for more stories from beyond the Quad.