I'd wager a guess that [2] was necessary for messages using it as a code, e.g., page number+word number, or page number and then the Nth word or letter.
The real answer is, the NSA is all about communications -- which isn't just electronics: it includes a huge element of linguistics.
The Bible angle: when a new tribe or culture is contacted, the very first thing that happens is that Christian missionaries get all excited and do their best to go there to spread the gospel. To do this, they have to learn the language sufficiently well to translate the Bible. So you've got this one text (with a quantifiably-variant or de-facto invariant baseline) that gets translated into every language on the planet as fast as is humanly possible after that language is discovered. It's a Rosetta stone.
I forget the number that was given for how many different-language Bibles the NSA has in their library, but it was impressive -- something over 900 languages.
The real answer is, the NSA is all about communications -- which isn't just electronics: it includes a huge element of linguistics.
The Bible angle: when a new tribe or culture is contacted, the very first thing that happens is that Christian missionaries get all excited and do their best to go there to spread the gospel. To do this, they have to learn the language sufficiently well to translate the Bible. So you've got this one text (with a quantifiably-variant or de-facto invariant baseline) that gets translated into every language on the planet as fast as is humanly possible after that language is discovered. It's a Rosetta stone.
I forget the number that was given for how many different-language Bibles the NSA has in their library, but it was impressive -- something over 900 languages.