Jarl Van Eycke On December 3rd 2020, David Oranchak (USA), Sam Blake (Australia) and Jarl Van Eycke (Belgium) solved the Zodiac Killer's 51-year-old 340 cipher, laying waste to the countless other solutions proposed by amateur sleuths down the years. Now, Jarl Van Eycke has done it again, solving the 386-year-old Code of Langren created by Michiel Florentius Van Langren (1598-1675) in the 17th century. Van Langren was an engineer, cartographer and astronomer from the Netherlands, known for his mapping of the moon. In 1634, he enciphered a solution for determining the longitude of a ship at sea for help with navigation, which had remained unbroken for nearly four centuries. His story attracted the interest of Jos Pauwels, an Antwerp amateur astronomer who studied his work, and mathematician Dirk Huylebrouck, who would contact Jarl Van Eycke after reading about his success with the Zodiac Killer's 340 cipher. Jarl Van Eycke, after being contacted by Dirk Huylebrouck, managed to crack the 386-year-old code in just one week.
The code, enciphered in the French language (despite its introduction), decoded to "Michel Florencio van Langren says that one should make two cylindrical copper vessels of equal volume that have a conical end at the bottom, in which a hole is made in the middle so that when they are filled with seawater, they let a line of water run until they empty. The stars know in how much time they must be empty. This noted, the first barrel is run on departure, while recording which known star is on the meridian. This vessel will be empty when this star is back on the same Earth meridian, knowing that it is empty in 24 hours of sidereal time. At the same time as when the first vessel stops flowing, the second vessel opens, which will also be empty when the said star is back on the meridian of departure. This careful operation will be done daily during the trip mentioned here if one wishes to know how many degrees of longitude one has traveled from the meridian of departure. One has only to determine this difference from the stars in the sky each time one of the vessels is empty. Not to be surprised, a cylindrical float floating on cork is used to indicate".
The code, enciphered in the French language (despite its introduction), decoded to "Michel Florencio van Langren says that one should make two cylindrical copper vessels of equal volume that have a conical end at the bottom, in which a hole is made in the middle so that when they are filled with seawater, they let a line of water run until they empty. The stars know in how much time they must be empty. This noted, the first barrel is run on departure, while recording which known star is on the meridian. This vessel will be empty when this star is back on the same Earth meridian, knowing that it is empty in 24 hours of sidereal time. At the same time as when the first vessel stops flowing, the second vessel opens, which will also be empty when the said star is back on the meridian of departure. This careful operation will be done daily during the trip mentioned here if one wishes to know how many degrees of longitude one has traveled from the meridian of departure. One has only to determine this difference from the stars in the sky each time one of the vessels is empty. Not to be surprised, a cylindrical float floating on cork is used to indicate".
