Cipher

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Index Entry

Cipher:

"... This abacus column imagining

Called also for a symbol

To represent an empty column

And that symbol became the cyphra--

Or in England cypher,

Or in America cipher,

Or what we symbolize as 0

And much later renamed "zero,"

To eliminate the ambiguity

Between the identity of the word cypher

With the word for secret codes

And the word for the empty number."

Bear Island, 25 August 1971.

Citations

1. RBF insert to Numerology draft August 1971, p. 13.