The Shakespeare Code

The Cipher Wheel

Photographs of the Cipher Wheel, an actual device created in the 1890s by a young Dr. Orville Owen.

The power of this story lies in an actual device created in the 1890s by a young Dr. Orville Owen.

Owen was a busy and successful physician who memorized the entire works of Shakespeare as a way to clear his mind between difficult cases. He began to see patterns and in time discovered what is now called the word cipher.

Owen built a one-of-a-kind cipher wheel exactly as the hidden code in the Shakespearean plays instructs:

The easiest way to carry on the work is to
Take your knife and cut all our books asunder,
And set the leaves on a great firm wheel
Which rolls and rolls.

Fellows wrote, "After numerous experiments he had two large wooden wheels, or cylinders, built. Around the cylinders, which measured 36 inches in diameter and 48 inches in height, was wound a thousand feet of waterproof, linen like material. Onto the pages he glued printed pages cut from valuable books and copies of books from the period of the English Renaissance."

Fellows found the 100-year-old device in an old warehouse in Detroit, Michigan and bequeathed it to Summit University before she passed on in 2006.