TheCodeBreakers
militaire. A new international language called Vola-piik ("World-Speak")
had been invented by a German priest. About 1885, it caught on in
France and flashed with express-train speed all over the country, not
only among intellectuals but among all classes; it was even heard in the
streets. From France it radiated throughout the world. The most active
propagandist of Volapiik was Auguste Kerckhoffs, who, at the second
Volapiik congress in Munich in 1887, was acclaimed director ("Dilekel,"
in Volapiik) of the International Academy of Volapiik. But at the third
congress, held at Paris in May of 1889, with Kerckhoffs presiding, critical
tensions within the movement mounted and finally broke it apart.
Kerckhoffs was crushed by the collapse of an international dream that
had seemed so needful and so certain. He created nothing else and, on
August 9, 1903, died while on vacation in Switzerland.
But his cryptologic ideas still nourish. For Kerckhoffs sought answers
annaabi.ee 
