Somerton Man: Verse 70 Hidden in Plain Sight

Verse 70
Hi-Resolution Enlargement

The image above shows a number of the words and individual letters from Verse 70 of the Rubaiyat that Jestyn apparently gave to Alf Boxall.

There are no adjustments that have been made to this image, what you see is a simple enlargement of the original image.

You will need to look very closely at the markings within the individual letters indicated by the arrows. What you are seeing is a classic example of code hidden in plain sight.

When you examine them carefully, you will see that some of the letters and numbers that are shown overlap the edge of the pen strokes, it has been expertly executed with characters ranging between .25 mm and .6 mm in height.

Every word in this verse including the dash on line 2, contains microcode. The code is typified by being a slightly darker colour than the pen strokes.

Whilst there is no doubt in my mind that this is microcode. Because we are dealing with an old document, we can improve the appearance of the code by processing the wording/letters and the method I use is bleaching. I will post a short video clip this coming weekend that will show the steps involved. It is very straightforward and it does provide a far better view.

You can download this image by right-clicking on it. You can view it on screen or you can print it out and if printing, remember to select the best quality option from your printer settings.

A last quick point, the darker part of the dash that you see near the top of the image also contains code, what is really cute about it is that the code has been written upside down, whereas the code in the lighter part of the dash is written upright. That made me smile :) It also serves to confirm that this is the real deal.