The Disclosure of the Famous 1800’s French Violin Dealers Sales Code

2017-06-09 String Instrument News

The unique code used by Gand & Bernardel in 1800’s revealed since they first used it 170 years ago. These French violin dealers employed this system to protect their product’s reserved price, purchase price, repair price, and selling price. More than 2,500 instruments in their shop at Paris have codes. A Musée de la Musique, a custodian of the stringed and bowed instrument Jean-Philippe Echard, deciphered the code. He and Pierrick Gaudry a computer cryptographer and scientist worked together to crack the code.

According to research, after Charles- Adolphe Gand succeeded his father and the head of the workshop, Charles-François in mid-1874 was the time when they introduce the code. The code is an inscription of numbers into letters. Gand, along with his business partners Gustave, Ernest bernadel and those who succeeded them used this inscription pattern until 1921. A study also reveals that the probable intention of using the code was to cover up prominent figures from those who wish to take a peek on their sales ledger or from the inquisitive eyes of tax collectors