“...time on their hands to study 200 year old letters.”
From the article: “Dr. Smithline has a Ph.D. in mathematics and now works professionally with cryptology, or code-breaking, at the Center for Communications Research in Princeton, N.J., a division of the Institute for Defense Analyses.”
Not quite ‘time on his hands.’ It is a critical part of our Defense intelligence.
I disagree. If he had professional cryptological work he would do that. There is no profit in breaking a 200 year old code in a letter to Thomas Jefferson.
Of course if he knew what he was doing it wouldn’t be called research.