ABSTRACT
Rosario Candela was a successful New York City architect and an excellent amateur cryptologist. For several years after World War II he served as president of the New York Cipher Society, lecturing to the half-dozen members in his excitable, Italian-accented manner at evening meetings in his offices at 654 Madison Avenue. He owed his reputation in part to his 1938 book The Military Cipher of Commandant Bazeries: An Essay in Decrypting. An attractively designed and printed work (the result, no doubt, of Candela’s publishing it himself ) of 137 pages, it charms its readers with idiosyncratic opinions and entertaining digressions.
