Charles Dellschau’s paintings and ciphertexts
Charles Dellschau (1830–1923) was a German-born butcher who emigrated to the United States in 1850 and spent most of his life in Texas. He remained completely unknown as an artist during his lifetime. Only decades after his death were his remarkable works rediscovered.
Dellschau left behind twelve large volumes filled with illustrations of extraordinary flying machines, which he called “aeros”. Much of his work purports to document the activities of the fictitious Sonora Aero Club, an alleged secret society of inventors that supposedly developed experimental aircraft in the 1850s. Dellschau referred to his illustrations as “plates,” and the surviving sequence begins with Plate 1601. Earlier plates might have been lost or destroyed. A recurring element throughout Dellschau’s books is the name NYMZA, the alleged secret organization said to have financed or directed the Sonora Aero Club.
Dellschau’s books also contain numerous encrypted words, abbreviations, and longer passages. This photo gallery is dedicated to these cryptographic elements.
The encryption method used by Dellschau is a simple letter-substitution cipher. This image shows the cipher key.
This image depicts another flying machine.
At the top center, the word NYMCA appears in encrypted form.
Here, too, the encrypted word “NYMZA” can be seen at the top.
Enlarged view of the encrypted word NYMCA.
This image depicts several flying machine designs.
In this cleartext text (bottom left), the encrypted word NYMZA appears once again.
This image shows the complete cipher alphabet.
It also contains two encrypted passages.
This object also depicts a flying machine.
I decipher this text as MB-EUTE, though I do not know what it means.
Two flying machines side by side
I am also unsure how to decipher this word: MYSBLB.
Literature
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