Posted by Peter Hyland on April 28, 2013 at 01:05:41 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Semaphore Dancing Figures posted by David Maxwell on April 27, 2013 at 10:44:35:
Possibly, but the idea of using 'matchstick men' as signal codes was not new when Conan Doyle published 'The Dancing Men' in 1903. A similar cipher system was published in 1832 (in the 'United Service Magazine' in the UK) and it cropped up again in an Army Signals Corps code in 1864. It was also used in fiction later in the century.
AR was in London in 1903, writing for literary magazines, so he was almost bound to have read the 'Strand Magazine' where 'The Dancing Men' was included. So he might have been inspired by that story, but I think it is just as likely that he knew of the earlier signal codes.