AI decodes 200-year-old Napoleon cipher
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Carter Church, an AI engineer from the United States, used artificial intelligence to decipher a coded message sent by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1809.
The message, addressed to one of Napoleon’s generals, detailed the positions of French and allied troops and had remained unsolved for over two centuries. OpenAI’s AI model completed the task in six hours, a process that would have taken weeks using traditional methods. Researchers are also applying AI to historical texts beyond coded messages.
Scientists used X-rays and AI to analyze ancient, fragile papyri from Herculaneum, a city destroyed by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, and virtually unrolled and read a Stoic philosophical text. The French National Institute for Digital Research is leading the “Back in Time” project, uniting historians, cryptographers, and AI specialists to decode old diplomatic and military correspondence.
Other projects, like Midrash at the EPHE-PSL in Paris, are using AI to transcribe millions of pages of Hebrew manuscripts, creating searchable databases of Jewish culture. Similarly, researchers are applying AI to records from Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, revealing details about the cathedral’s daily life and construction.
