¶ 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
- RBF insert to Numerology draft August 1971, p. 13.
