Throughout all of history, ciphers and secret codes were devised to keep intelligence from falling into the wrong hands. From the WWII German "Enigma" machine to America's Cherokee Code Talkers, people used ciphers and codes to safeguard secrets. One of my favorite mysterious artworks is the sculpture Antipodes, outside of the Hirshhorn Museum. No one knows what it means, and its companion piece Kryptos sits outside at Langley. I was inspired to create this collection because a parent wrote to us asking what kinds of spy or secret code summer camps were available at the Smithsonian. Before passing them along to the International Spy Museum, I wondered what kind of topical collection I could create in SLL. It turns out, there's a lot of material culture associated with codes and coding, so these are some of my favorite objects and videos in our Smithsonian collections.