Morf, thanks for your posting about about the symbols. Wow! How lucky was Z to live in the "Age of Aquarius"!" OK, I am needling you but no I do not think so. Nor do I think the symbols the person known as Z utilized are necessarily well known or handy, like astrological ones. But, specific, if somewhat obscure ones. (Note to poster above: thanks for the information on ancient scripts, I harbor an interest in that subject, but I don’t believe, on the basis of the extant evidence, it could be entirely random, historic or pre-historic images, but deliberately and methodically culled from(more than likely)more than one [visual source; *Added 9/6/13. Paging through a geography text from the late 1960s, Maps and Diagrams, for example, revealed an entire chart of all sorts
of symbols that could have been employed by the Zodiac. (Z, repeatedly demonstrated, to contemporary codebreakers at the FBI and NSA, at least, his skill in this somewhat arcane area), and thus, I dissent from Graysmith on this point. This would follow logically, does it not, if more than one optical device was used? Device number one would be an(Inverted image)optical projection device and? And….? Still, the relevant question remains: what sources? Also, while substitution schemes can be cracked from time to time, like the recent one of the religious dissident Roger Williams’ code, eventually unraveled by a student undergraduate at Brown, I have a hunch, just a non-expert, hunch there is no-one-to-one mapping here. (I readily admit I could be wrong. But, there you have it.)

Have returned from upstate (NY), having seen a large and interesting variety of predigital, photographic film cameras at Eastman house museum, extending fairly far into the last century or so. It may also be interesting to note cameras, like guns, especially on some of these very early varieties, had sights, not entirely dissimilar from those on guns, particularly one called a Stebbin (sic) automatic camera, was particularly suggestive. Z’s mention of specific things in his communications must mean either something….. or nothing. For example, the mention of the Beatles, film animation Yellow Submarine, music, and so on might reflect certain recurrent interests, and not necessarily deceptions as put forward by a few discussants. (EX: The Beatles ’64 LP cover HELP!, has the Fab Four extending their limbs in a particular form of communication[yes, semaphore)], the word "Beat" of course, can refer to more than one, but coherent, sensible, and possibly relevant things, the "Beats" of SF (and NY), musical beats, etc. )and so on. I suppose one must consider the divide between those who believe in coincidences, or a set of hypotheses (AKA Duhem–Quine thesis )that are either correct, or not.