Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Railroad ciphers

From: "Katy Duffield" ksd3@centurytel.net

I am writing a book for 8-14 years olds for Chicago Review Press about California history. In my research I discovered that Central Pacific officials often used cipher or code [encryption] in their correspondence to keep information from being intercepted by the Union Pacific.

Is there anyone there that would have more information on the cipher? I would like to include an activity in the book where readers could use the original cipher of the Central Pacific, or something similar. ...

Katy Duffield

Golden Spike Reportage - Best of the Web award

From: "Shmoop BOTW awards" shmoopbotw@gmail.com

I'm writing to let you know that your website won Shmoop's Best of the Web award for Great Inventions of the Gilded Age!

Shmoop is an education website for students and teachers (middle school through college ages). Our mission is to make learning fun and relevant for today's students. Each of our learning guides includes a "Best of the Web" section, where we point teachers and students to quality, reliable websites for further exploration. And we picked your site!

Our writers (who are mostly Ph.D. students at Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, etc.) pick the sites that go into our Best of the Web section. Teachers and students rely on our expert writers to point out only the highest quality websites, so you should feel quite honored!

You can check out our learning guide for Great Inventions of the Gilded Age ...

Congratulations and thanks for providing such a great resource for teachers & students.

Celeste & The Shmoop Team
** Best of the Internet - PC Magazine
** Official Honoree - 2009 Webby Awards